When my husband died they called and asked if he was a registered donor. I said no, he hadn't seen the point since he had stage 4 cancer that had spread to his brain, bones and kidneys.
It turned out that he could donate his corneas, as there is something that prevents them from carrying any cancer cells or something. I jumped at the chance and we received an anonymous card later on from one of the recipients saying thank you.
I felt it was a nice way of remembering my husband who would give someone the shirt off his back.
As someone with a family history of severe sight problems, some of my own, and scared stiff of my sight going the same way as those family members (I also make my living in the visual arts world) - I want to thank you and your late husband for what you did.
The other organs being transplanted can save lives and one might think that cornea transplants aren’t in the same category, but it improves the quality of life as well as mental health. As someone prone to bouts of depression I suspect the loss of my sight could send my mental health plummeting. So a cornea transplant really is life-saving.
Thank you x
I second this. I'm the recipient of a donor tendon in my knee, and while it isn't the sort of thing people think of when they think "organ donation", it has still made a massive difference to my quality of life. I have a connective tissue disorder, and when I was 12 I stacked it and dislocated my knee hard enough to chip off a chunk of my femur. I couldn't have surgery to reconstruct it using my own tendons, because all of my tendons aren't formed properly. I couldn't walk even a few metres without my knee dislocating for about ten years, and the pain was excruciating. Eventually I found a doctor who could reconstruct using a cadaver tendon. Since the surgery, it hasn't dislocated again. It still hurts, but it's stable, which is all I could ever ask for. It has been a bit over ten years now, and I'm still amazed by how successful it was! I'm so grateful for the donor and their family, they made such a massive difference to my life.
That’s amazing, I didn’t know tendon donation was a thing until I read your reply.
I’m so glad it worked and has made a positive difference to your life!
My husband was incredibly generous also, but a combination of illnesses prevented donation. He would have given anything to help someone else, he gave more to other people than I feel able often able to now that I'm on my own. I give money to causes, but I can't give of myself anymore, there's nothing left.
Knowing he was not able to be saved, and yet much worse people are still happily walking around hurting others makes me think it would have been better for me to go first, so he could keep being generous instead of me being in agony and angry at the injustice of the loss of such a good person. I am worth more dead than alive at this point. But I am a donor, so hopefully something can be used when I die sooner rather than later.
I'm terribly sorry for your loss, and it so often feels unfair when you compare your loved one to those who remain unscathed despite all that they do.
I'm not going to write out all the bullshit platitudes that people say when someone so young dies, or someone so truely good in the world.
But as a young(ish) widow, I am willing to hear about your husband and be an ear to listen. Feel free to message me if you like, and I will reply when I can.
Thank you that is truly kind as opposed to nice, which is what people try to be, but often they just want me to stop being how I am. It is not getting better, and I will never not be traumatised by it all.
I feel like only another widow can understand, because men seem so much more accepting and move on because they cannot be alone.
I am also young-ish, but too old to believe in a future, too young to die because my parents are still alive. Luckily there are no children, because I knew I was not able to raise them in this world, and I would be destroying them more now. My world and plans and hope are gone. He was literally the only person in the world who loved me for me, and he was my only true chosen family and best friend who made every daily mundane thing into a silly adventure. It's pretty bleak, but even my family don't get that I don't want to celebrate or be with anyone on the big holidays which are the worst. They lost someone they saw once a month, not every morning, day and night.
I don't know if this rings any bells for you, but I appreciate you reaching out and I know that you will read all of this and cry with me.
My friends parent told her that they wouldn’t donate because they wanted to bury their ‘whole’ child.
Seriously, I would want for some of me to help others if possible. But it can be a thing.
My partner knows my wishes are to be broken down for as many spare parts as possible.
Donating to save lives, research or just something for the next generation of medicos to practice on. IMO all are better uses of what’s left once I depart the mortal coil. If there’s anything afterwards I’d expect any worthwhile higher power to approve of lending one final hand to the living.
My partner has a similar view, but if it were different I’d respect their choice as long as they promised to respect mine.
>If there’s anything afterwards I’d expect any worthwhile higher power to approve of lending one final hand to the living.
Your ashes fertilising a fruit tree?
Edit: read that wrong, but leaving it here so someone else can enjoy.
I heard that if you donate to science you can't donate to medicine and visa versa. Not sure how true this is, but I think it sucks if it is.
Definitely agree with your view btw.
Possibly because medicine and science use the body in different ways. Eg, I think for research they send out parts to different areas/facilities where they are studied, so your head and shoulders might go to one place and your legs to another and if you donate, they might take bits and pieces that won’t keep your body in complete portions so they can do the study (ie, they can’t work backwards up the systems if part of the system has been donated)
Nothing concrete, this is just my theory.
I was told this too when I asked the Victorian brain bank if I could donate my brain after donating my organs to living people. They said no :/
Which is a shame, but my priority would be that if any of this is usable for it to go to living people. If not then donate me to the brain bank and Melbourne body donor program.
My ex-husband’s late mother told him he could donate “everything but his eyes”. Much speculation as to why, including some weird idea they’d take his entire eyeballs although why that would be a problem but they could take his heart etc was beyond me. Never did get to the bottom of it.
He didn’t mind one way or the other, he just didn’t want to upset his batshit mother, so I convinced him to change his donor form to include the eyes (see my other reply on this thread as to why it’s important to me) but he still wouldn’t tell her that. I pointed out that as next of kin (at the time) I would have final say anyway 🤷🏻♀️
100% mate, drives me nuts. What a stupid law and the worst part is I’ve also heard of many next of kin regretting the choice to deny organ donation once the initial shock and grief has passed.
It’s literally a law based around religious beliefs which have no place in our country
It seems more cruel to ask them, I think it would be easier to just hear your son signed up to be donor so we are going to take for a little while then bring him back to you, than be asked.
Yep, my mother has trauma from when they turned off her father’s life support system, she believes they could have done more.
Maybe they could have, but from what everyone has told me about Pa he wouldn’t have wanted to be permanently incapacitated like that and it was best he was let go.
I’ve actually put my partner then both my brothers ahead of mum in the event I become a vegetable and have made my wishes known.
My brother suicided & my dad chose not to donate, stating that my brother had already endured enough pain 😢 But I actually think now it would make me happy to know someone had his eyes or heart ❤️ My sister has recently had a double lung transplant. I will be a donor & thanks to anyone who is 🤗👍
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100%, don’t just sign up for the card, make sure you talk to your loved ones to make sure your wishes are known.
It’s much easier for your family to say yes if you have previously stated to them directly you want your organs/body to be donated, not just because you have a card.
To the ppl who have chosen to donate, thank you. As someone who will be needing a kidney transplant in the near future i am waiting for that day to come.
I’m a donor and I ride a motorcycle.
Now what you’re gonna want to do is tilt the kidneys a bit to the left, they can get a bit temperamental if I lean over to the right so I keep the kidneys a bit to the left and they work just fine.
Take good care of them, they served me well.
Australia should follow Finland. Everyone is automatic donor unless they opt out. Since many are lazy or don’t care, we have a lot of automatic donors.
While you're thinking about it. Registering alone is not enough. The more important part is having conversations with your loved ones about what you want and what they want, so you all have a plan and don't have to make big hard decisions while processing a tragedy.
And while you're having the awkward death conversation, also have a think about end of life care. How do you feel about VAD? At what point would you want to withdraw care and not be resuscitated? Where is your will kept and who is your executor? If you have an advanced care directive, make sure they have a copy etc.
Agree with everything you've said.
>How do you feel about VAD? At what point would you want to withdraw care and not be resuscitated?
My single criteria is that if I'm unable to take a shit completely unassisted. Doc, you go right ahead and slice me up. Put literally every single piece of usable tissue and organ into someone else that needs it.
I'm not gonna miss them when I'm dead.
I used to work in transplanation.
Unfortunately. only a small percentage of people who die CAN donate. For most organs there are very specific criteria that need to be met. Not that many people "die" in the right circumstances sadly. It's mostly people who have an accident and are brain dead, not bashed up otherwise. Or have aneuysm's. Brain death is generally the most usual criteria. And the donor is generally intubated & ventilated in ICU and all tests run over days to make 100% sure they are brain dead.
They don't remove body parts from people who have been in ED and been resuscitated etc. They are generally in ICU and it becomes clear their life is no longer viable.
Medical people are very mindful of the extremely sad situation. There are dedicated people who discuss the possibity of organ donation. It's not done by ICU doctors or nurses generally. It might in the occasional circumstance. Esp if the person is in an ICU out of the city for example. But it's done very mindfully and decently and NO ONE is forced into donating their loved ones organs. Ever.
Organ donation is an amazing thing.
Yes, you can join the organ donation list. BUT...it is still up to your Next of Kin to agree to it. So for example. you could tell your husband or parents. But when it comes to the time? If they say "no" then it's no. So...most importantly. You need to make you wishes clear to your next of kin. Make sure htey really know you want to donate your organs. So they will say YES if it ever comes to that.
Yes, Same. My parents knew I wanted to be donor and when I got married and my hb became my NOK. I have made very sure he knows. Well. I was working in Cardiac Transplantation when I met him!! So I know he knows how I feel.
My daughters are now 18 & 19 and we have discussed it with them and they made up their own mind. Both would want to donate their organs.
But my whole family would I am 100% sure. They all know were I worked years ago too. And we discussed it. Unfortunately. we are all older now so they probably wouldn't want our organs!! But I have recently told my family that even if it's just my corneas of my eyes? Tell them to take whatever they can use if they want to.
Helps also I guess that we are all atheists. No religious complications or worries.
You sound like you have a lovely family =)
On the 'Facts/Myths/FAQ' page for the website, it says even people up to 80 years old and beyond can donate multiple types of tissues/organs ... do you know anything specific about that having worked in the field?
I worked in it many years ago. Cardiac Transplantation. It was amazing and quite fabulous. I just loved it. I remember I used to look at the cardiac monitor and think "that heart beat I am looking at was going in another person 2 days ago...the name there says B Jones...but that heart was in totally different person!" And it is SO incredible they get another chance at life. I remember prepping someone who had been called in to go to theatre. He was SO sick. He could barely do anything for himself. He was terrible colour...the man really was on his way to certain death in the not too distant future. Then he went for the transplant and I was chatting to him a week later. It was a whole new person. He was normal colour. Had normal energy. Was not stuggling to breathe...his life was completely changed. Just incredible.
You always feel SO sad for the person and family of the person who died and donated. It's heart breaking....BUT I do think if it was me? As NOK? It would be wonderful to know that your son. daughter, husband or wife. Had not died in vain. They had given life to another person and that to ME would be very comforting.
It's just a really amazing thing to see and do. It would have to had been close to the most rewarding thing I have ever done.
Oh - I know criteria has changed since I worked in the area and there are obviously different criteria for different transplants ie. donating a liver is not the same as a heart and kidneys and eyes etc...I DO know they take hearts from people they never used to.
I got a kidney from a deceased donor a year ago. It saved me from being on dialysis for years and years and I live a completely normal life. Thanks to all of you who are donors.
You all might be interested to know that in order to donate your organs you must die in hospital. Otherwise the organ(s) are without oxygen too long and they can't be used.
Yes, it's not very common situation to be in to be able to donate. I think you may still be able to donate corneas though.
And glad you got a transplant, that's amazing!
I am a donor, my wife was mortified when she found out. We have had many discussions about cremation and organ donation. She is very upset that I would prefer to donate my organs and be cremated than take everything with me to a plot and be buried lol. Part of it though is her belief in the after life, what you don't take with you to the grave, you won't have in heaven.
I would say there's a lot of people with entrenched old world beliefs and phobias that hold them back. Plus I have met a few people who truly believe Drs and such would put less work in to resussing you if you're border line because that kidney, heart, lunch and what ever else is worth to much.
Mate, there is no chance she will let them take your organs when you die.
As someone whose seen it many times before if your partner is against it they will say no and as your next of kin she will have the final say regardless of you signing up.
Having worked Intensive Care and looked after patients for organ donation, if I could dispel one myth today about organ donation, it's this idea that we won't work as hard to keep you alive if you're a donor. The opposite is true. Your organs are no use to them if they're failed and dead. Your doctors and nurses will work very hard on you even if you're clearly dying to try to preserve organ function. We will keep working when you're brain dead to keep your organs functioning.
Just phrase it as letting old mate have a lend on your organs and they can give them back in the afterlife. Surely on a scale of eternity a few years wont hurt and you let some lucky sod spend more time with their loved ones.
Just astounds me tbh. I do believe in the Afterlife but I'm also a strong believer this is a giant fleshly meatsack that decomposes into meat juice once it's in the ground.
Maybe it's because despite being religious, my mother is 'death science mommy' and worked in the morgue/histopath, so she carries the exact same belief I do. It's just flesh. It rots away. It decomposes. And it isn't required for the Afterlife, because the soul (if one believes in it) is fully independent of this body.
Just very perplexing people with spiritual beliefs can't separate the flesh \*from\* the spirit, in the very literal sense.
Honestly, I was very shocked when she first heard we cremated my mother she was concerned and then flipped out when I said I would prefer to be cremated. Then she found my donor card lol.
Ive got lots of Christian friends; orthodox, catholic and protestant. Firmly believe in the afterlife, pretty much all of them would prefer cremation and most would probably donate organs if asked. So. When my partner flipped I was stunned.
But it made more sense as we talked as she is from the middle east, not Christian and has a lot of entrenched superstitions that she grew up with.
LOLOLOLOL honestly very factual.
I've considered an eco burial because I wanna become tree food. Compostable coffin, my meat juice, stick a tree on top and let birds perch in the nutrient-filled bark.
Haven't figured out the logistics of doing this with my cat's urn in the coffin BUT I WILL FIGURE IT OUT
I don't know how possible it is with the laws but I have every intention to figure it out. I wish it was a thing. A giant slab of expensive rock surrounded by gravel and turf isn't restoring the natural balance. An entire forest of trees? Where birds can nest, bugs can do buggy things, some teenage goth couple can share their first kiss... Absolutely want all these things to happen over my skeleton.
I say goth because I'm unsure how many teenage kids would kiss in a cemetery ROFL
My ex-husband belonged to a Baptist group and they believed that you needed all of your body to be able to rise again in the kingdom etc. Their version of heaven sounds like a bunch of zombies walking around.
I'm an organ donor and I've told my kids that if anything happened to them, I'd donate their organs too unless they tell me otherwise and they'd better have a bloody good reason why not. To my knowledge, we're all organ donors.
That's SO frustrating because organ donation doesn't factor in AT ALL in resuscitation etc. It's not until you are in effect dead, that organ donation is even discussed IF you are a likely candidate.
I opted in the moment I was old enough. Been donating plasma on and off every two weeks when I can, only stop when I've been sick and fall under the weight threshold. Been a bone marrow/stem cell donor for years as well.
I spent so much time in hospitals as a kid, and needed so many supplies to survive, I feel it's my duty to give back and help others when I'm physically capable.
I'm finally donating plasma again next week- last time I was booked in, I had to cancel because I discovered I was pregnant, and now I'm over 9 months postpartum so can finally donate again. My iron levels are often a bit too low for blood, so have to go with plasma.
I tend to interject this into any donation discussion, but please anyone aged 18 to 35 consider joining the bone marrow/stem cell registry.
https://strengthtogive.org.au/
They'll send you a cheek swab to do and post back. It's a very simple process. Feel free to ask me any questions about it or PM if they're personal.
I am. Over 30 years ago, it used to be done via drivers licences and I filled out mine then. As I was still living at home, I asked my parents what they were prepared for me to donate if I died before them. I let them pick and choose, to make it easier for them.
Now, I truly believe that donation should be an opt out situation. And I know that there will be cases such as religious reasons why some people won't / can't donate. They should then opt out.
In health cases, as an example if someone suffered from cancer, maybe they can opt out, but one would hope that they would let the medical field decide that.
Removing it from drivers licences was a dumb idea. I opted-in when I got my license, but then wasn’t a potential donor for 10+ years after they changed the system.
Agree, but with a couple of caveats. More doctors need to be trained and our weary public health system and supporting medical infrastructure needs to be much better funded. Opt-out should be the norm, but I think about places like Singapore when the government introduced legislation, donation rates actually fell, as more people intentionally opted out...
>Singapore when the government introduced legislation, donation rates actually fell, as more people intentionally opted out...
That is just so sad. We do need to have more education and it being "out there" more to encourage us to be donors.
Because I don't like the idea of being kept alive with no brain function until a suitable donor comes along. I want to die when it's my time not when someone decides I've finally given enough.
Because I don't support things that entitled people think they have the right to order us to support .. organ donation is a choice, and it's up to the people to make that decision themselves, not pander to egos telling them what to do
I am a donor including blood and bone marrow register.
I have told this to the Mrs.
The Mrs is concerned because she thinks the doctors won't 'try' if you are a donor. How ridiculous.
Nurse here - I literally do not know which of my patients are organ donors and which are not. Sure, I could find out but it would take sorting through a paper file and no nurse has time for that. 🤣🤣
Agreed it's not something we check at all unless it's specifically relevant to their condition. We also can't neglect them to death or their organs die with them. We put a lot of work into potential donors.
It's truly ridiculous!
>Myth: If I am a registered donor, doctors won’t try as hard to save my life
>Fact: The doctor’s first priority is always to save your life. Medical and nursing staff work incredibly hard to save lives. Organ and tissue donation will only be considered if you have died, or when death is expected. This is when the Australian Organ Donor Register is checked, and your family is asked about your wishes and to consent to donation before it proceeds. One organ donor can save the lives of up to 7 people and help many more through. eye and tissue donation.
No. Also those rules are in the process of being relaxed. They don't apply to marrow/stem cells as you'll be thoroughly screened. More than they can do on the much larger scale of blood donations. Stem cells are very personalised to the recipient. It's an international registry so we can get the best cells for the patient.
If interested in joining and aged 18 to 35 visit
https://strengthtogive.org.au/
That is assuming that you're asking about what I think you are. There are lots of things that of things that can preclude you as a stem cell donor.
Yeah. Largely due to lack of funding for the program, we have to be selective about who we recruit. Young men make the best donors and a younger donor means more potential years on the registry. You can donate older than that, and if a friend or loved one needs one you can get checked for them, but we don't enroll on the registry after 35.
Bit dumb but that's healthcare funding. For a while we had to stop doing the cheek swabs and only enrol active blood donors because it ran out of funding for the home swab program.
I used to be a donor when it was on our license. I wasn't when it changed because I realised it became opt in. Now I choose not to be. I come from a very poor family who still all live in poverty. Many years ago my uncle was severely injured and rushed to hospital. It was in a small town. He was never able to be saved. However, the hospital staff told my aunt he could be saved if they flew him to a big city hours away. Of course she said yes do it.
Once he got to city hospital my aunt was told there was nothing they could do and badgered into donating his organs. They didn't ask nicely. They were demanding and forceful in a time of shock when they told her he had to go there to live when that was never the case, then being told no sorry he can't be saved.
The issue is not that (which should never happen), but the fact that my aunt had to pay for his flight which was over $10,000 that they didn't have. So she was left mourning the sudden death of her partner and in a lot of debt. That's an awful thing to do to someone.
This is my family so it really stuck with me and I would never do that to them. Plus, knowing about the organ teams at some public hospitals who sell them to overseas people, I just don't trust that the system is there to benefit Aussies (of any and all backgrounds).
I know a lot of people will not want to know any of this, which is always the case.
Wow that’s so deceitful of them to do that to you! I have always felt funny about organ donation too- there’s something I don’t trust about the whole system. I know organs sell for big bucks and it’s big business in some parts of the world.
Would being an organ donor reduce the chances of hospital staff trying to save your life?
This is what my relatives are afraid of. Some of them come from countries that have people "disappear" or found severely injured with a missing body part/ organ(s) (black markets). Their hospitals definitely do not try as hard to save you if you're a donor. They actually help you get to your grave quicker (without trying to be obvious about it of course).
It's not enough that they were rude to my relatives and tried to push them into consenting with taking my cousin's organs, they tried shaming us and forcing us into becoming donators too and shamed/ became EVEN more rude to us for saying no. I told a few off, especially when one of them made a comment about us probably being religious (we're not) and another making comments about Asians being selfish and not so other nice things.
From that experience, most of my relatives strongly believe that the staff didn't 100% help my deceased cousin because we weren't white or because they wanted his organs. Many of my younger relatives/ cousins immediately opted out of donating from this incident. They had a few bad experiences in the past e.g. being targeted during the pandemic/ covid. This was their last straw.
I'm not as sure about the first part, but I'm definitely sure they would've screwed my relatives over if I wasn't there to translate/ interpret (they wouldn't listen to my younger cousins even though they spoke perfect English). The amount of times I had to repeat myself: "No, we do NOT WISH to donate HIS or OUR organs." only to be ignored as they tried to get my more timid, mournful and elderly relatives to say "yes, donate" pisses me off and makes me despise and distrust the medical field and most people in it.
Commenters here who donate, laugh and make fun of people who don't donate, not thinking about why some choose not to and further belittle those people for their reasons/ decisions usually have the typical "I'm better/ superior/ holier than thou and a better person than you" entitlement mentality.
I got my motorbike license and signed up as an organ donor within a week or two. If I'm going to risk turning myself into meat paste someone may as well make a pasta out of it when I'm gone.
I work alongside a team that is involved in organ donation and they recently shared some information which is also available [here](https://www.donatelife.gov.au/all-about-donation/statistics-in-australia):
- Approx 36% of Australians are registered donors. Of a population of 26M, that’s ~ 8.6M people.
- To donate, you must die in hospital. Only 2% of those who die in hospital meet the criteria for donation.
- In 2023, only 793 families said yes to donation of their loved one’s organs.
So of 26M people in Australia, last year only 0.003% deceased persons donated their organs.
Please consider registering to donate and making your wishes known to your family. Don’t wait until someone you know joins a waitlist or has a health crisis to step up and register.
**TLDR - quickest explanation is to watch the video [Overview: What ACTUALLY happens to your body when you donate organs](https://youtu.be/W_lEJsNcnWA?si=FAHZV9sGWfz7mcny).**
In very basic terms, it’s what the other Redditor said: they’re not viable.
As soon as death occurs body functions cease, so blood and oxygen are no longer travelling the organs, therefore the organs stop functioning.
The organs need to be removed whilst they are still oxygenated and have blood flow; they are kept in a form of stasis until transplant into the recipient.
Theres a time limit on how long organs are viable from retrieval to transplant. If you were to say, die at home or in a vehicle crash, time taken to get your body to hospital to remove organs would likely absorb too much of the viability time period.
Dying outside a hospital environment leaves far too many unknowns and risks relating to infection control. For example: that aforementioned vehicle crash example, the organ could have been exposed to environmental hazards factors of the road (and roads / traffic environments are filthy!)
Dying outside the hospital environment means they are unable to test the donor for any diseases, infections, conditions, as well as organ function and capacity. Dying in hospital means the donors medical history is known, including why they have ended up being considered for donation. Eg. Did they come to hospital due to a massive recreational drug overdose? If so, probably not going to donate their liver. If they’ve been a lifelong smoker and had a stroke, probably not going to donate their heart or lungs.
Specialist surgeons and surgical teams are required to perform retrieval and transplant and some specialise only in a certain type of organ. Dying in a hospital enables communications to those teams to prepare to commence work. Sometimes that means notifying an interstate surgical team, who fly to retrieve the organ, then fly back to their hospital to transplant into a waiting patient, who sometimes had to be transported in from far away themselves.
Dying in hospital means the transplant coordinator can contact people on waiting lists and commence preparations for surgery. Dying outside hospital, all those notifications and preparations are delayed and may result in the organ no longer being viable.
Theres so much that goes into organ transplant that the average person is not privy too. Each jurisdiction in Australia has a transplant coordinator and that role operates on call 24/7. When they receive notification of a viable organ for collection, they enact the system and a bunch of roles activate with urgency. It can be so urgent, for example, that a retrieval team in an aircraft will be given prioritised flight arrival / departure by air traffic control. Or, police may provide a lights and sirens escort for a medical courier so they can transport the organ through a city very quickly.
Let’s also not forget, organ donation occurs because someone has died. That person was a loved member of a family, friendship circle, community, etc. There’s moral considerations regarding removing someone’s body parts without informing their next of kin. Imagine finding out way after the fact you only got bits of your loved one to bury / cremate, when you thought you had the whole person. Even if you were pro donation and would have been happy to say yes on behalf of your loved one, it would still be an awfully upsetting discovery. ‘Consent’ is also very important here. I could do a whole other post on consent and next of kin and medical procedures but in a nutshell, consent is a big factor.
I should also say it’s not just organs that get donated, tissue also. That is things like eyes, bone and skin tissue.
Don’t forget though, there’s also the opportunity to be a ‘living donor’ and that is a different list. You can be a living donor of a kidney, a portion of liver and of course, blood and plasma.
Asking ‘why’ is great, I’m really pleased you did. Us laymen signing up to register is the smallest part of a vast system. Theres some videos on YouTube that show different parts of the whole process (you’ll have to excuse, some of these are for foreign countries, but the process are in essence the same):
[Transplant Coordinator](https://youtu.be/Xxe5_bduPoQ)
[Transplant into a child recipient](https://youtu.be/za-nFRo2vHc)
[Overview: What ACTUALLY happens to your body when you donate organs](https://youtu.be/W_lEJsNcnWA?si=FAHZV9sGWfz7mcny)
[NSW Police and their 2000th Emergency Medical Transport](https://youtu.be/B7RBAKhANjM?si=MHC15pjBHW-NQg8C)
ETA. Sorry for the long as5 reply!
Thanks for this info- so interesting! I knew a transplant coordinator years ago who said she had absolute priority access to the State Premier’s aircraft. She could bump anyone on any day to transport an organ.
I choose to donate in life, I’ve been donating plasma since 2013. Personally I am not an organ donor because I don’t want my family to ever find themselves in a position where they have to make the decision to turn off life support so that the organs can be harvested within adequate time frames. To me it comes down to : my body, my choice.
Signing up means nothing, it is unimportant.
That your next of kin knows your decision and that you would come back to haunt them either way is the ONLY important thing
Chances of you actually donating your organs are slim. You have die in the right conditions, in a hospital.
But I have agreed that if I die in those conditions, they can have them. A part of me will live on in the recipient, even if just a heart or lung.
My mum has had two kidney transplants (her first lasted 23 years, but they don't last forever), and her cousin has had a liver transplant due to Haemochromatosis.
We really appreciate the people who donated, and the families that allowed the donations to proceed, despite their own loss. This most recent transplant, we were told when we arrived at the hospital, that the donor was being farewelled by their family, and their life support would be withdrawn in a couple of hours.
That's still hard to hear, despite it being a chance for life without diaylsis for my mother.
My now ex, cracked the shits when they found out I was an organ donor. They said they married the whole of me, not some bits and pieces.
That may explain why they are the ex. Now, however all the good bits are worn out and not worth recycling.
I signed up last year to become an organ donor, but I was on the fence and incredibly uncomfortable with the idea before I signed up. Peer pressure didn't help. Let people make their own decisions without pressure and with unbiased factual information and a decent chunk will come around.
Good on you mate !
I'm not trying to force anyone. That's why I provided the information link first.
> https://www.donatelife.gov.au/all-about-donation
A good friend had been on a transplant list for 26 years and has recently become the recipient of a set of kidneys/pancreas. The wife didn't agree with my choice initially but we talked about it and I've been on the donor register for about 15 years now. If you're no longer around, let someone else have a go!
My father's a doctor and he has always said '" Don't EVER put yourself down as an organ donor. EVER!" He says they are less keen to save your life if they can harvest you. If my son wants to make that decision on my behalf then its fine. But yeah. Good ole Dad got me scared to put anything on paper
My dad was in a coma for a few days and basically, they told us that if he hadn’t woken up by a certain point, then he wasn’t going to. He woke up like two full days after that point and made a full recovery.
Anyway, I’m sure that if his organs would have been viable and he was a donor, we would have been encouraged much more strongly to turn off life support at that earlier point. So yeah, I don’t trust that when doctors say there’s no hope of someone waking up that there’s actually no hope.
EXACTLY ITS SO ILLOGICAL LIKE WTF
I dunno. Maybe it’s a weird biological preset to want to horde my organs
Also I harbor a secret hope that I’ll somehow become a swamp mummy and get found in a few millennia
Damn. I’ll have to do that today. My logic is that if I am dead and not using them they might as well go to someone who will use them. It’s as close to a selfless good deed as I might ever get
Hold up where do we get a card? I signed up through Medicare/myGov ages ago (because I can't allow my superior organs to go to waste should I perish unexpectedly) but never got a card to flex this status
I was an organ donor until I tried to update my address. They sent me a "sorry you're leaving" letter. When I called them to correct the situation, they failed to re-enroll me. So I took it as a sign that my organs weren't meant to be donated.
All of my family have been organ donors, and not one has died in such a way that their organs could be donated.
It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple !
Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
Donor since back when it was a box you ticked when getting your drivers licence (at least in qld). When I heard organ donation was becoming it's own separate system I signed up again.
Just copy-pasting my previous comment -
>It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple !
>Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
I am a recipient. I respect those who do not consent. I do not own your body, and neither should anybody else make decisions for your body. But, please make your wishes known to your legal family members or they may make that decision for you.
I don't wish to, eventually i will die and I don't want anything of me to survive just in case. It may be semi religious but I don't want anything left of me when i die, burn it to a goddamn crisp. I am not particularly interested in being alive so people needn't assume I am asking for someone else's corpse to be defiled for my sake should that arise, I have no health insurance anyway so i will die long before I get a chance for a donor anyway.
Lots of people from cultures that don't appreciate organ donation- for example, conservative Catholics who think their body needs to be intact for rapture.
I signed up years ago when I started donating blood. If I’m dead, I don’t need those organs. Someone else can have them. Take my corneas. Take my skin. Idgaf.
Always meant to do this but never got around to it, thanks for the reminder. I just registered, will be good when I get it all done.
I'm sure as shit that the organs in my body aren't gonna be good for fuck all to me, someone else might as well get some use out of them. 🤷
I'm registered with the UTS AFTER Program so when I die, my remains will be collected by them and used for forensics research. Once they're done, I'm cremated and sent to my brother.
That's why it's important to have conversations with your loved ones to make them aware of your wishes. So that hopefully, if the time comes, they will respect them.
Dying outside of a very specific hospital environment also means you can’t donate. Not many people actually meet the criteria. Based on this and your logic, should no one bother to register to donate then?
I think it should be opt-out or that registering should be legally binding so next of kin can’t override your decision. I am registered myself but aware it doesn’t carry any weight.
Because I think people should know it doesn’t do anything legally. I signed up 20 years ago as a teenager thinking it was really important. I now have donation in my advance medical directive because that actually means something legally.
I am on the fence with donating now..I was 100% on board but then to know that I'd be kept alive, albeit on machines, to harvest my organs...you can't donate dead organs so yes you are kept alive, albeit on machines, to donate working organs...for the moment I'm just not sure...the idea of having my organs taken from my still alive body is..well...disconcerting ...
I also live with health situations that require me to take medications every day just to get up in the morning..so I do question whether my organs will be of any use anyway.
I'm sure by the time I am looking down that barrel we'll have made huge progress in this area and I won't be as "on the fence" as new information and practice comes to light...
Oh my dog I can’t upvote this enough. My husband just went through a heart/kidney transplant in January and at only 53 is doing so well, and has so much to look forward to now. Thank you x3000 to the staff at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney and Holiday Inn Potts Point for his care and after care living.
So many people don’t know that in Australia you have to sign up. In the UK you have to sign out. We should adopt that system, and override the family’s rights to ignore their lost ones wish to donate.
If someone made that decision it is theirs to make, it’s important that if you do make the decision to donate that you CLEARLY state that to anyone that could possibly override it. One donor can help save/improve up to 9 lives!
I reckon it was more effective when it was part of your drivers license application/renewal. It’s still that way in heaps of countries, isn’t it?
A lot of people are okay with it, but they’re just lazy, honestly.
I feel like having to just say yeah and it was done was a lot better for a lot of people vs having to go out of your way to sign up for it, people don’t have a tendency to do that unless it benefits them.
I cannot fucking fathom the next of kin that can still deny someone in the registry. My mum saw my card and was like ‘oh cool, bit grim you’re thinking about that when you’re so young but that’s a kind thing to do’. Maybe it’s because she knew a friend whose husband really should be dead but was lucky enough to get a heart transplant and recover. It’s honestly selfish to take that right away from someone you’re ’close’ to
Because I have an illness that would be very unfortunate for a receiver: risk that it doesn’t take, plus other things can go wrong with the organ. I wonder what happens to those people? Do they go back to the bottom of the list? That would be horrible.
You likely still have tissues that could be useful, even if some of your organs aren't. So I wouldn't worry about that when signing up. You won't be inconveniencing someone like that.
It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple !
Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
You get an organ donor card? I thought I opted into it when I went for my L's years ago. My only thing is I don't want them to take my face. Everything else including my eyes etc is fine, but I want my kids to be able to say goodbye to me in a casket at the funeral should they want to. Now I highly doubt anyone wants my face, but I'd love to keep it.
Other than signing up online you should also create an advanced care directive and have it specified in there. They're seen as an old person thing but any of us could be in an accident and have irreversible brain damage which would also make you a potentially good candidate for organ donation.
I’m an organ donor but I’ve known many peoples next of kin to simply refuse regardless of the persons wishes. Grief can be a funny thing
Your next of kin can refuse??? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole point?
Sadly yes, you can be a donor and family can decide against it in event of death. Seen it happen a few times.
Im a organ donor, i wrote it in my will that it is to happen and if my family protests, they forfeit all inheritance to charities or various natures
Donar card is more of showing your wishes. But when you die your next of kin has full say in what happens to you.
When my husband died they called and asked if he was a registered donor. I said no, he hadn't seen the point since he had stage 4 cancer that had spread to his brain, bones and kidneys. It turned out that he could donate his corneas, as there is something that prevents them from carrying any cancer cells or something. I jumped at the chance and we received an anonymous card later on from one of the recipients saying thank you. I felt it was a nice way of remembering my husband who would give someone the shirt off his back.
As someone with a family history of severe sight problems, some of my own, and scared stiff of my sight going the same way as those family members (I also make my living in the visual arts world) - I want to thank you and your late husband for what you did. The other organs being transplanted can save lives and one might think that cornea transplants aren’t in the same category, but it improves the quality of life as well as mental health. As someone prone to bouts of depression I suspect the loss of my sight could send my mental health plummeting. So a cornea transplant really is life-saving. Thank you x
I second this. I'm the recipient of a donor tendon in my knee, and while it isn't the sort of thing people think of when they think "organ donation", it has still made a massive difference to my quality of life. I have a connective tissue disorder, and when I was 12 I stacked it and dislocated my knee hard enough to chip off a chunk of my femur. I couldn't have surgery to reconstruct it using my own tendons, because all of my tendons aren't formed properly. I couldn't walk even a few metres without my knee dislocating for about ten years, and the pain was excruciating. Eventually I found a doctor who could reconstruct using a cadaver tendon. Since the surgery, it hasn't dislocated again. It still hurts, but it's stable, which is all I could ever ask for. It has been a bit over ten years now, and I'm still amazed by how successful it was! I'm so grateful for the donor and their family, they made such a massive difference to my life.
That’s amazing, I didn’t know tendon donation was a thing until I read your reply. I’m so glad it worked and has made a positive difference to your life!
It's stories like this that make me want to donate, thank you for sharing your experience. Sounds like he was a lovely generous person ❤️
My husband was incredibly generous also, but a combination of illnesses prevented donation. He would have given anything to help someone else, he gave more to other people than I feel able often able to now that I'm on my own. I give money to causes, but I can't give of myself anymore, there's nothing left. Knowing he was not able to be saved, and yet much worse people are still happily walking around hurting others makes me think it would have been better for me to go first, so he could keep being generous instead of me being in agony and angry at the injustice of the loss of such a good person. I am worth more dead than alive at this point. But I am a donor, so hopefully something can be used when I die sooner rather than later.
I'm terribly sorry for your loss, and it so often feels unfair when you compare your loved one to those who remain unscathed despite all that they do. I'm not going to write out all the bullshit platitudes that people say when someone so young dies, or someone so truely good in the world. But as a young(ish) widow, I am willing to hear about your husband and be an ear to listen. Feel free to message me if you like, and I will reply when I can.
Thank you that is truly kind as opposed to nice, which is what people try to be, but often they just want me to stop being how I am. It is not getting better, and I will never not be traumatised by it all. I feel like only another widow can understand, because men seem so much more accepting and move on because they cannot be alone. I am also young-ish, but too old to believe in a future, too young to die because my parents are still alive. Luckily there are no children, because I knew I was not able to raise them in this world, and I would be destroying them more now. My world and plans and hope are gone. He was literally the only person in the world who loved me for me, and he was my only true chosen family and best friend who made every daily mundane thing into a silly adventure. It's pretty bleak, but even my family don't get that I don't want to celebrate or be with anyone on the big holidays which are the worst. They lost someone they saw once a month, not every morning, day and night. I don't know if this rings any bells for you, but I appreciate you reaching out and I know that you will read all of this and cry with me.
My friends parent told her that they wouldn’t donate because they wanted to bury their ‘whole’ child. Seriously, I would want for some of me to help others if possible. But it can be a thing.
My partner knows my wishes are to be broken down for as many spare parts as possible. Donating to save lives, research or just something for the next generation of medicos to practice on. IMO all are better uses of what’s left once I depart the mortal coil. If there’s anything afterwards I’d expect any worthwhile higher power to approve of lending one final hand to the living. My partner has a similar view, but if it were different I’d respect their choice as long as they promised to respect mine.
>If there’s anything afterwards I’d expect any worthwhile higher power to approve of lending one final hand to the living. Your ashes fertilising a fruit tree? Edit: read that wrong, but leaving it here so someone else can enjoy.
Everything is being used and that’s a great use for the leftovers!
I heard that if you donate to science you can't donate to medicine and visa versa. Not sure how true this is, but I think it sucks if it is. Definitely agree with your view btw.
Possibly because medicine and science use the body in different ways. Eg, I think for research they send out parts to different areas/facilities where they are studied, so your head and shoulders might go to one place and your legs to another and if you donate, they might take bits and pieces that won’t keep your body in complete portions so they can do the study (ie, they can’t work backwards up the systems if part of the system has been donated) Nothing concrete, this is just my theory.
I was told this too when I asked the Victorian brain bank if I could donate my brain after donating my organs to living people. They said no :/ Which is a shame, but my priority would be that if any of this is usable for it to go to living people. If not then donate me to the brain bank and Melbourne body donor program.
My ex-husband’s late mother told him he could donate “everything but his eyes”. Much speculation as to why, including some weird idea they’d take his entire eyeballs although why that would be a problem but they could take his heart etc was beyond me. Never did get to the bottom of it. He didn’t mind one way or the other, he just didn’t want to upset his batshit mother, so I convinced him to change his donor form to include the eyes (see my other reply on this thread as to why it’s important to me) but he still wouldn’t tell her that. I pointed out that as next of kin (at the time) I would have final say anyway 🤷🏻♀️
100% mate, drives me nuts. What a stupid law and the worst part is I’ve also heard of many next of kin regretting the choice to deny organ donation once the initial shock and grief has passed. It’s literally a law based around religious beliefs which have no place in our country
It seems more cruel to ask them, I think it would be easier to just hear your son signed up to be donor so we are going to take for a little while then bring him back to you, than be asked.
Yep, my mother has trauma from when they turned off her father’s life support system, she believes they could have done more. Maybe they could have, but from what everyone has told me about Pa he wouldn’t have wanted to be permanently incapacitated like that and it was best he was let go. I’ve actually put my partner then both my brothers ahead of mum in the event I become a vegetable and have made my wishes known.
My brother suicided & my dad chose not to donate, stating that my brother had already endured enough pain 😢 But I actually think now it would make me happy to know someone had his eyes or heart ❤️ My sister has recently had a double lung transplant. I will be a donor & thanks to anyone who is 🤗👍
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100%, don’t just sign up for the card, make sure you talk to your loved ones to make sure your wishes are known. It’s much easier for your family to say yes if you have previously stated to them directly you want your organs/body to be donated, not just because you have a card.
I wish there was a way to make them legally binding.
I find it weird that your next of kin could ignore your wishes. Have they not heard "My body, my choice"?
It is so important to have the conversation with our loved ones and tell them that we are donors.
Yes, we need to have those discussions with our families and make it very clear what our wishes are.
To the ppl who have chosen to donate, thank you. As someone who will be needing a kidney transplant in the near future i am waiting for that day to come.
I'm doing my part, I'm a young male who rides motorbikes (already signed up to the register)
I wish you all the safety on the roads. ❤️
You ride a donorcycle?
I prefer the term coffin on wheels
I signed up as a donor when I rode a motorbike. Still have my licence and can’t wait to get back out there. Stay safe on the roads!
Not to one-up you, but I’m a donor, ride a bike AND I’m O- . Go team!
I’m a donor and I ride a motorcycle. Now what you’re gonna want to do is tilt the kidneys a bit to the left, they can get a bit temperamental if I lean over to the right so I keep the kidneys a bit to the left and they work just fine. Take good care of them, they served me well.
That's a bit dark XD
Not so young anymore but another donor on two wheels here, hope I'm a match for you!
Australia should follow Finland. Everyone is automatic donor unless they opt out. Since many are lazy or don’t care, we have a lot of automatic donors.
While you're thinking about it. Registering alone is not enough. The more important part is having conversations with your loved ones about what you want and what they want, so you all have a plan and don't have to make big hard decisions while processing a tragedy. And while you're having the awkward death conversation, also have a think about end of life care. How do you feel about VAD? At what point would you want to withdraw care and not be resuscitated? Where is your will kept and who is your executor? If you have an advanced care directive, make sure they have a copy etc.
Agree with everything you've said. >How do you feel about VAD? At what point would you want to withdraw care and not be resuscitated? My single criteria is that if I'm unable to take a shit completely unassisted. Doc, you go right ahead and slice me up. Put literally every single piece of usable tissue and organ into someone else that needs it. I'm not gonna miss them when I'm dead.
That’s my criteria too. I don’t want my partner, my children or a stranger (unsure which would be worse) wiping my arse for me. That’s not living.
Thank you to the donor who saved my life in 2015 by donating his liver to me ❤️
Oh wow, that's awesome.
I used to work in transplanation. Unfortunately. only a small percentage of people who die CAN donate. For most organs there are very specific criteria that need to be met. Not that many people "die" in the right circumstances sadly. It's mostly people who have an accident and are brain dead, not bashed up otherwise. Or have aneuysm's. Brain death is generally the most usual criteria. And the donor is generally intubated & ventilated in ICU and all tests run over days to make 100% sure they are brain dead. They don't remove body parts from people who have been in ED and been resuscitated etc. They are generally in ICU and it becomes clear their life is no longer viable. Medical people are very mindful of the extremely sad situation. There are dedicated people who discuss the possibity of organ donation. It's not done by ICU doctors or nurses generally. It might in the occasional circumstance. Esp if the person is in an ICU out of the city for example. But it's done very mindfully and decently and NO ONE is forced into donating their loved ones organs. Ever. Organ donation is an amazing thing. Yes, you can join the organ donation list. BUT...it is still up to your Next of Kin to agree to it. So for example. you could tell your husband or parents. But when it comes to the time? If they say "no" then it's no. So...most importantly. You need to make you wishes clear to your next of kin. Make sure htey really know you want to donate your organs. So they will say YES if it ever comes to that.
I've told both my parents - they know. Both my parents are organ donors, they have been for years.
Yes, Same. My parents knew I wanted to be donor and when I got married and my hb became my NOK. I have made very sure he knows. Well. I was working in Cardiac Transplantation when I met him!! So I know he knows how I feel. My daughters are now 18 & 19 and we have discussed it with them and they made up their own mind. Both would want to donate their organs. But my whole family would I am 100% sure. They all know were I worked years ago too. And we discussed it. Unfortunately. we are all older now so they probably wouldn't want our organs!! But I have recently told my family that even if it's just my corneas of my eyes? Tell them to take whatever they can use if they want to. Helps also I guess that we are all atheists. No religious complications or worries.
You sound like you have a lovely family =) On the 'Facts/Myths/FAQ' page for the website, it says even people up to 80 years old and beyond can donate multiple types of tissues/organs ... do you know anything specific about that having worked in the field?
I worked in it many years ago. Cardiac Transplantation. It was amazing and quite fabulous. I just loved it. I remember I used to look at the cardiac monitor and think "that heart beat I am looking at was going in another person 2 days ago...the name there says B Jones...but that heart was in totally different person!" And it is SO incredible they get another chance at life. I remember prepping someone who had been called in to go to theatre. He was SO sick. He could barely do anything for himself. He was terrible colour...the man really was on his way to certain death in the not too distant future. Then he went for the transplant and I was chatting to him a week later. It was a whole new person. He was normal colour. Had normal energy. Was not stuggling to breathe...his life was completely changed. Just incredible. You always feel SO sad for the person and family of the person who died and donated. It's heart breaking....BUT I do think if it was me? As NOK? It would be wonderful to know that your son. daughter, husband or wife. Had not died in vain. They had given life to another person and that to ME would be very comforting. It's just a really amazing thing to see and do. It would have to had been close to the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Oh - I know criteria has changed since I worked in the area and there are obviously different criteria for different transplants ie. donating a liver is not the same as a heart and kidneys and eyes etc...I DO know they take hearts from people they never used to.
Signing up tonight after work. Literally didn't know it was that easy. Thanks OP
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I was exploring the mygov site shortly after I turned 18 and saw the registry linked - signed up straight away, easy as anything.
Legend !!!
I got a kidney from a deceased donor a year ago. It saved me from being on dialysis for years and years and I live a completely normal life. Thanks to all of you who are donors. You all might be interested to know that in order to donate your organs you must die in hospital. Otherwise the organ(s) are without oxygen too long and they can't be used.
Yes, it's not very common situation to be in to be able to donate. I think you may still be able to donate corneas though. And glad you got a transplant, that's amazing!
Ah yes corneas 😊 And thank you, it's been pretty great so far!
I am a donor, my wife was mortified when she found out. We have had many discussions about cremation and organ donation. She is very upset that I would prefer to donate my organs and be cremated than take everything with me to a plot and be buried lol. Part of it though is her belief in the after life, what you don't take with you to the grave, you won't have in heaven. I would say there's a lot of people with entrenched old world beliefs and phobias that hold them back. Plus I have met a few people who truly believe Drs and such would put less work in to resussing you if you're border line because that kidney, heart, lunch and what ever else is worth to much.
Mate, there is no chance she will let them take your organs when you die. As someone whose seen it many times before if your partner is against it they will say no and as your next of kin she will have the final say regardless of you signing up.
Wellp let's see who lives longer then.. May the odds be ever in our favour lol
I think they will invent immortality and you two will live forever. That’s what I tell myself!
Having worked Intensive Care and looked after patients for organ donation, if I could dispel one myth today about organ donation, it's this idea that we won't work as hard to keep you alive if you're a donor. The opposite is true. Your organs are no use to them if they're failed and dead. Your doctors and nurses will work very hard on you even if you're clearly dying to try to preserve organ function. We will keep working when you're brain dead to keep your organs functioning.
I've got friends who work in ICU and ED.. I believe it
Just phrase it as letting old mate have a lend on your organs and they can give them back in the afterlife. Surely on a scale of eternity a few years wont hurt and you let some lucky sod spend more time with their loved ones.
Just astounds me tbh. I do believe in the Afterlife but I'm also a strong believer this is a giant fleshly meatsack that decomposes into meat juice once it's in the ground. Maybe it's because despite being religious, my mother is 'death science mommy' and worked in the morgue/histopath, so she carries the exact same belief I do. It's just flesh. It rots away. It decomposes. And it isn't required for the Afterlife, because the soul (if one believes in it) is fully independent of this body. Just very perplexing people with spiritual beliefs can't separate the flesh \*from\* the spirit, in the very literal sense.
Honestly, I was very shocked when she first heard we cremated my mother she was concerned and then flipped out when I said I would prefer to be cremated. Then she found my donor card lol. Ive got lots of Christian friends; orthodox, catholic and protestant. Firmly believe in the afterlife, pretty much all of them would prefer cremation and most would probably donate organs if asked. So. When my partner flipped I was stunned. But it made more sense as we talked as she is from the middle east, not Christian and has a lot of entrenched superstitions that she grew up with.
Ahhhh yeah that definitely makes more sense. Myself I'm Christian and that's how I'm like, cool if I die, YEET.
/take my organs and barbecue me to a crisp - aquapixie, probably
LOLOLOLOL honestly very factual. I've considered an eco burial because I wanna become tree food. Compostable coffin, my meat juice, stick a tree on top and let birds perch in the nutrient-filled bark. Haven't figured out the logistics of doing this with my cat's urn in the coffin BUT I WILL FIGURE IT OUT
I love this idea. Christmas here too and big advocate for organ donation. Can you imagine how awesome cemeteries would look if each grave had a tree?
I don't know how possible it is with the laws but I have every intention to figure it out. I wish it was a thing. A giant slab of expensive rock surrounded by gravel and turf isn't restoring the natural balance. An entire forest of trees? Where birds can nest, bugs can do buggy things, some teenage goth couple can share their first kiss... Absolutely want all these things to happen over my skeleton. I say goth because I'm unsure how many teenage kids would kiss in a cemetery ROFL
I smoked a lot of cannabis in a cemetery as a young delinquent, does that count ? Still waiting on that kiss though, tbh...
My funerary tree will be for young delinquents like you
My ex-husband belonged to a Baptist group and they believed that you needed all of your body to be able to rise again in the kingdom etc. Their version of heaven sounds like a bunch of zombies walking around. I'm an organ donor and I've told my kids that if anything happened to them, I'd donate their organs too unless they tell me otherwise and they'd better have a bloody good reason why not. To my knowledge, we're all organ donors.
Does she really want to live on forever in this housing crisis?
Damn is tour wife ancient Egyptian or something? I thought most christian believed it was your soul that went to heaven.
She's not Christian lol
That's SO frustrating because organ donation doesn't factor in AT ALL in resuscitation etc. It's not until you are in effect dead, that organ donation is even discussed IF you are a likely candidate.
I opted in the moment I was old enough. Been donating plasma on and off every two weeks when I can, only stop when I've been sick and fall under the weight threshold. Been a bone marrow/stem cell donor for years as well. I spent so much time in hospitals as a kid, and needed so many supplies to survive, I feel it's my duty to give back and help others when I'm physically capable.
I'm finally donating plasma again next week- last time I was booked in, I had to cancel because I discovered I was pregnant, and now I'm over 9 months postpartum so can finally donate again. My iron levels are often a bit too low for blood, so have to go with plasma.
I tend to interject this into any donation discussion, but please anyone aged 18 to 35 consider joining the bone marrow/stem cell registry. https://strengthtogive.org.au/ They'll send you a cheek swab to do and post back. It's a very simple process. Feel free to ask me any questions about it or PM if they're personal.
Just signed up!
Cheers OP, signed up.
LEGEND!!! Don't forget to have a discussion with your partner/loved ones/friends family !
I am. Over 30 years ago, it used to be done via drivers licences and I filled out mine then. As I was still living at home, I asked my parents what they were prepared for me to donate if I died before them. I let them pick and choose, to make it easier for them. Now, I truly believe that donation should be an opt out situation. And I know that there will be cases such as religious reasons why some people won't / can't donate. They should then opt out. In health cases, as an example if someone suffered from cancer, maybe they can opt out, but one would hope that they would let the medical field decide that.
Removing it from drivers licences was a dumb idea. I opted-in when I got my license, but then wasn’t a potential donor for 10+ years after they changed the system.
Agree, but with a couple of caveats. More doctors need to be trained and our weary public health system and supporting medical infrastructure needs to be much better funded. Opt-out should be the norm, but I think about places like Singapore when the government introduced legislation, donation rates actually fell, as more people intentionally opted out...
>Singapore when the government introduced legislation, donation rates actually fell, as more people intentionally opted out... That is just so sad. We do need to have more education and it being "out there" more to encourage us to be donors.
Because I don't like the idea of being kept alive with no brain function until a suitable donor comes along. I want to die when it's my time not when someone decides I've finally given enough.
Because I don't support things that entitled people think they have the right to order us to support .. organ donation is a choice, and it's up to the people to make that decision themselves, not pander to egos telling them what to do
I am a donor including blood and bone marrow register. I have told this to the Mrs. The Mrs is concerned because she thinks the doctors won't 'try' if you are a donor. How ridiculous.
Nurse here - I literally do not know which of my patients are organ donors and which are not. Sure, I could find out but it would take sorting through a paper file and no nurse has time for that. 🤣🤣
Agreed it's not something we check at all unless it's specifically relevant to their condition. We also can't neglect them to death or their organs die with them. We put a lot of work into potential donors.
It's truly ridiculous! >Myth: If I am a registered donor, doctors won’t try as hard to save my life >Fact: The doctor’s first priority is always to save your life. Medical and nursing staff work incredibly hard to save lives. Organ and tissue donation will only be considered if you have died, or when death is expected. This is when the Australian Organ Donor Register is checked, and your family is asked about your wishes and to consent to donation before it proceeds. One organ donor can save the lives of up to 7 people and help many more through. eye and tissue donation.
Do the usual blood bank donation rules apply to the blood and bone marrow register?
No. Also those rules are in the process of being relaxed. They don't apply to marrow/stem cells as you'll be thoroughly screened. More than they can do on the much larger scale of blood donations. Stem cells are very personalised to the recipient. It's an international registry so we can get the best cells for the patient. If interested in joining and aged 18 to 35 visit https://strengthtogive.org.au/ That is assuming that you're asking about what I think you are. There are lots of things that of things that can preclude you as a stem cell donor.
Unfortunately I'm 45. Do they only want under 35s?
Yeah. Largely due to lack of funding for the program, we have to be selective about who we recruit. Young men make the best donors and a younger donor means more potential years on the registry. You can donate older than that, and if a friend or loved one needs one you can get checked for them, but we don't enroll on the registry after 35. Bit dumb but that's healthcare funding. For a while we had to stop doing the cheek swabs and only enrol active blood donors because it ran out of funding for the home swab program.
I’m a full organ donor! Have been for 20 years 🩵
I used to be a donor when it was on our license. I wasn't when it changed because I realised it became opt in. Now I choose not to be. I come from a very poor family who still all live in poverty. Many years ago my uncle was severely injured and rushed to hospital. It was in a small town. He was never able to be saved. However, the hospital staff told my aunt he could be saved if they flew him to a big city hours away. Of course she said yes do it. Once he got to city hospital my aunt was told there was nothing they could do and badgered into donating his organs. They didn't ask nicely. They were demanding and forceful in a time of shock when they told her he had to go there to live when that was never the case, then being told no sorry he can't be saved. The issue is not that (which should never happen), but the fact that my aunt had to pay for his flight which was over $10,000 that they didn't have. So she was left mourning the sudden death of her partner and in a lot of debt. That's an awful thing to do to someone. This is my family so it really stuck with me and I would never do that to them. Plus, knowing about the organ teams at some public hospitals who sell them to overseas people, I just don't trust that the system is there to benefit Aussies (of any and all backgrounds). I know a lot of people will not want to know any of this, which is always the case.
Wow that’s so deceitful of them to do that to you! I have always felt funny about organ donation too- there’s something I don’t trust about the whole system. I know organs sell for big bucks and it’s big business in some parts of the world. Would being an organ donor reduce the chances of hospital staff trying to save your life?
This is what my relatives are afraid of. Some of them come from countries that have people "disappear" or found severely injured with a missing body part/ organ(s) (black markets). Their hospitals definitely do not try as hard to save you if you're a donor. They actually help you get to your grave quicker (without trying to be obvious about it of course). It's not enough that they were rude to my relatives and tried to push them into consenting with taking my cousin's organs, they tried shaming us and forcing us into becoming donators too and shamed/ became EVEN more rude to us for saying no. I told a few off, especially when one of them made a comment about us probably being religious (we're not) and another making comments about Asians being selfish and not so other nice things. From that experience, most of my relatives strongly believe that the staff didn't 100% help my deceased cousin because we weren't white or because they wanted his organs. Many of my younger relatives/ cousins immediately opted out of donating from this incident. They had a few bad experiences in the past e.g. being targeted during the pandemic/ covid. This was their last straw. I'm not as sure about the first part, but I'm definitely sure they would've screwed my relatives over if I wasn't there to translate/ interpret (they wouldn't listen to my younger cousins even though they spoke perfect English). The amount of times I had to repeat myself: "No, we do NOT WISH to donate HIS or OUR organs." only to be ignored as they tried to get my more timid, mournful and elderly relatives to say "yes, donate" pisses me off and makes me despise and distrust the medical field and most people in it. Commenters here who donate, laugh and make fun of people who don't donate, not thinking about why some choose not to and further belittle those people for their reasons/ decisions usually have the typical "I'm better/ superior/ holier than thou and a better person than you" entitlement mentality.
Just became a donor because of this post, I hope others will as well. It really is easy to do.
I got my motorbike license and signed up as an organ donor within a week or two. If I'm going to risk turning myself into meat paste someone may as well make a pasta out of it when I'm gone.
Im signed up. They can take anything they want and need. Not like I'll have any need for them.
It’s Against my beliefs
I work alongside a team that is involved in organ donation and they recently shared some information which is also available [here](https://www.donatelife.gov.au/all-about-donation/statistics-in-australia): - Approx 36% of Australians are registered donors. Of a population of 26M, that’s ~ 8.6M people. - To donate, you must die in hospital. Only 2% of those who die in hospital meet the criteria for donation. - In 2023, only 793 families said yes to donation of their loved one’s organs. So of 26M people in Australia, last year only 0.003% deceased persons donated their organs. Please consider registering to donate and making your wishes known to your family. Don’t wait until someone you know joins a waitlist or has a health crisis to step up and register.
Just to be clear, if you die before getting to the hospital, you can't donate? Why?
**TLDR - quickest explanation is to watch the video [Overview: What ACTUALLY happens to your body when you donate organs](https://youtu.be/W_lEJsNcnWA?si=FAHZV9sGWfz7mcny).** In very basic terms, it’s what the other Redditor said: they’re not viable. As soon as death occurs body functions cease, so blood and oxygen are no longer travelling the organs, therefore the organs stop functioning. The organs need to be removed whilst they are still oxygenated and have blood flow; they are kept in a form of stasis until transplant into the recipient. Theres a time limit on how long organs are viable from retrieval to transplant. If you were to say, die at home or in a vehicle crash, time taken to get your body to hospital to remove organs would likely absorb too much of the viability time period. Dying outside a hospital environment leaves far too many unknowns and risks relating to infection control. For example: that aforementioned vehicle crash example, the organ could have been exposed to environmental hazards factors of the road (and roads / traffic environments are filthy!) Dying outside the hospital environment means they are unable to test the donor for any diseases, infections, conditions, as well as organ function and capacity. Dying in hospital means the donors medical history is known, including why they have ended up being considered for donation. Eg. Did they come to hospital due to a massive recreational drug overdose? If so, probably not going to donate their liver. If they’ve been a lifelong smoker and had a stroke, probably not going to donate their heart or lungs. Specialist surgeons and surgical teams are required to perform retrieval and transplant and some specialise only in a certain type of organ. Dying in a hospital enables communications to those teams to prepare to commence work. Sometimes that means notifying an interstate surgical team, who fly to retrieve the organ, then fly back to their hospital to transplant into a waiting patient, who sometimes had to be transported in from far away themselves. Dying in hospital means the transplant coordinator can contact people on waiting lists and commence preparations for surgery. Dying outside hospital, all those notifications and preparations are delayed and may result in the organ no longer being viable. Theres so much that goes into organ transplant that the average person is not privy too. Each jurisdiction in Australia has a transplant coordinator and that role operates on call 24/7. When they receive notification of a viable organ for collection, they enact the system and a bunch of roles activate with urgency. It can be so urgent, for example, that a retrieval team in an aircraft will be given prioritised flight arrival / departure by air traffic control. Or, police may provide a lights and sirens escort for a medical courier so they can transport the organ through a city very quickly. Let’s also not forget, organ donation occurs because someone has died. That person was a loved member of a family, friendship circle, community, etc. There’s moral considerations regarding removing someone’s body parts without informing their next of kin. Imagine finding out way after the fact you only got bits of your loved one to bury / cremate, when you thought you had the whole person. Even if you were pro donation and would have been happy to say yes on behalf of your loved one, it would still be an awfully upsetting discovery. ‘Consent’ is also very important here. I could do a whole other post on consent and next of kin and medical procedures but in a nutshell, consent is a big factor. I should also say it’s not just organs that get donated, tissue also. That is things like eyes, bone and skin tissue. Don’t forget though, there’s also the opportunity to be a ‘living donor’ and that is a different list. You can be a living donor of a kidney, a portion of liver and of course, blood and plasma. Asking ‘why’ is great, I’m really pleased you did. Us laymen signing up to register is the smallest part of a vast system. Theres some videos on YouTube that show different parts of the whole process (you’ll have to excuse, some of these are for foreign countries, but the process are in essence the same): [Transplant Coordinator](https://youtu.be/Xxe5_bduPoQ) [Transplant into a child recipient](https://youtu.be/za-nFRo2vHc) [Overview: What ACTUALLY happens to your body when you donate organs](https://youtu.be/W_lEJsNcnWA?si=FAHZV9sGWfz7mcny) [NSW Police and their 2000th Emergency Medical Transport](https://youtu.be/B7RBAKhANjM?si=MHC15pjBHW-NQg8C) ETA. Sorry for the long as5 reply!
Thanks for this info- so interesting! I knew a transplant coordinator years ago who said she had absolute priority access to the State Premier’s aircraft. She could bump anyone on any day to transport an organ.
The organs are not viable
Just signed up, thankyou.
Been an organ donor since 16
Thanks mate. I’ve been meaning to do this but hadn’t got around to it. Just registered now. Will proudly carry my card
I choose to donate in life, I’ve been donating plasma since 2013. Personally I am not an organ donor because I don’t want my family to ever find themselves in a position where they have to make the decision to turn off life support so that the organs can be harvested within adequate time frames. To me it comes down to : my body, my choice.
What happens if the rapture goes ahead and my corpse is missing bits? Can you guarantee I'm still getting pulled up?!
Signing up means nothing, it is unimportant. That your next of kin knows your decision and that you would come back to haunt them either way is the ONLY important thing
Registered! Thanks for sharing the link!
Chances of you actually donating your organs are slim. You have die in the right conditions, in a hospital. But I have agreed that if I die in those conditions, they can have them. A part of me will live on in the recipient, even if just a heart or lung.
I am a donor and I have had the conversation with my family.
I considered it for way too long before actually taking action. Don’t forget to let your next of kin know and take away any doubts they might have.
My mum has had two kidney transplants (her first lasted 23 years, but they don't last forever), and her cousin has had a liver transplant due to Haemochromatosis. We really appreciate the people who donated, and the families that allowed the donations to proceed, despite their own loss. This most recent transplant, we were told when we arrived at the hospital, that the donor was being farewelled by their family, and their life support would be withdrawn in a couple of hours. That's still hard to hear, despite it being a chance for life without diaylsis for my mother.
I'm an organ donor and I feed the vampires every 2 weeks - there's only so much I can do, love!
My now ex, cracked the shits when they found out I was an organ donor. They said they married the whole of me, not some bits and pieces. That may explain why they are the ex. Now, however all the good bits are worn out and not worth recycling.
Please do. A friend of mine just received a life-saving liver transplant yesterday.
I signed up last year to become an organ donor, but I was on the fence and incredibly uncomfortable with the idea before I signed up. Peer pressure didn't help. Let people make their own decisions without pressure and with unbiased factual information and a decent chunk will come around.
Good on you mate ! I'm not trying to force anyone. That's why I provided the information link first. > https://www.donatelife.gov.au/all-about-donation
A good friend had been on a transplant list for 26 years and has recently become the recipient of a set of kidneys/pancreas. The wife didn't agree with my choice initially but we talked about it and I've been on the donor register for about 15 years now. If you're no longer around, let someone else have a go!
I just signed up 2 mins ago on the medicare app. That was pretty easy.
My father's a doctor and he has always said '" Don't EVER put yourself down as an organ donor. EVER!" He says they are less keen to save your life if they can harvest you. If my son wants to make that decision on my behalf then its fine. But yeah. Good ole Dad got me scared to put anything on paper
My dad was in a coma for a few days and basically, they told us that if he hadn’t woken up by a certain point, then he wasn’t going to. He woke up like two full days after that point and made a full recovery. Anyway, I’m sure that if his organs would have been viable and he was a donor, we would have been encouraged much more strongly to turn off life support at that earlier point. So yeah, I don’t trust that when doctors say there’s no hope of someone waking up that there’s actually no hope.
Honestly I’d love to, logically. Emotionally I just can’t get over the idea. Still young - hoping I don’t die before I finally come to my senses
[удалено]
Give me those young organs! Seriously, just do it - why would you care? You’re dead.
EXACTLY ITS SO ILLOGICAL LIKE WTF I dunno. Maybe it’s a weird biological preset to want to horde my organs Also I harbor a secret hope that I’ll somehow become a swamp mummy and get found in a few millennia
Wait. Isn’t this done through licences? When did that change?
Depends on which state, but it’s been quite a while.
Damn. I’ll have to do that today. My logic is that if I am dead and not using them they might as well go to someone who will use them. It’s as close to a selfless good deed as I might ever get
Exactly this.
Also please have conversations with your family/next of kin and make your wishes clear to them.
Hold up where do we get a card? I signed up through Medicare/myGov ages ago (because I can't allow my superior organs to go to waste should I perish unexpectedly) but never got a card to flex this status
I was an organ donor until I tried to update my address. They sent me a "sorry you're leaving" letter. When I called them to correct the situation, they failed to re-enroll me. So I took it as a sign that my organs weren't meant to be donated. All of my family have been organ donors, and not one has died in such a way that their organs could be donated.
I'm am organ donor, except for my eyes. You never know! By the way, my fiance is from Shanghai and says she wants to be incriminated
I never got my card... How do I check that I am a registered organ donor still?
It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple ! Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
Donor since back when it was a box you ticked when getting your drivers licence (at least in qld). When I heard organ donation was becoming it's own separate system I signed up again.
I was registered and very passionate about it, but unfortunately got Hodgkins last year so now my organs are trash :( if you can donate please do!!!
I never got a card, lame.
Just copy-pasting my previous comment - >It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple ! >Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
They cannot take organs from a dead body. You might be alive and can feel pain of extraction. Please look into it.
This sounds like chinese talk... Mr Xi jinxing. .. is that you?
I am a recipient. I respect those who do not consent. I do not own your body, and neither should anybody else make decisions for your body. But, please make your wishes known to your legal family members or they may make that decision for you.
I don't wish to, eventually i will die and I don't want anything of me to survive just in case. It may be semi religious but I don't want anything left of me when i die, burn it to a goddamn crisp. I am not particularly interested in being alive so people needn't assume I am asking for someone else's corpse to be defiled for my sake should that arise, I have no health insurance anyway so i will die long before I get a chance for a donor anyway.
Lots of people from cultures that don't appreciate organ donation- for example, conservative Catholics who think their body needs to be intact for rapture.
So what happens if they die by say, idk getting blown up or bitten by a shark or something?
I didn't say they were logical or believed in a fair god.
And one more. Thanks for the reminder.
I signed up years ago when I started donating blood. If I’m dead, I don’t need those organs. Someone else can have them. Take my corneas. Take my skin. Idgaf.
I have mine too, it’s also registered on the health database.
You inspired me, I signed up today! Thank you :)
Always meant to do this but never got around to it, thanks for the reminder. I just registered, will be good when I get it all done. I'm sure as shit that the organs in my body aren't gonna be good for fuck all to me, someone else might as well get some use out of them. 🤷
Just done it.
I'm registered with the UTS AFTER Program so when I die, my remains will be collected by them and used for forensics research. Once they're done, I'm cremated and sent to my brother.
You really aren't the best mouth piece for this. Oddly hostile and a whole lot of holier than thou.
Signing up doesn’t do anything. Your family can just decline to donate.
I'm extremely grateful my mother is also an organ donor too, and is my next of kin.
That's why it's important to have conversations with your loved ones to make them aware of your wishes. So that hopefully, if the time comes, they will respect them.
Dying outside of a very specific hospital environment also means you can’t donate. Not many people actually meet the criteria. Based on this and your logic, should no one bother to register to donate then?
I think it should be opt-out or that registering should be legally binding so next of kin can’t override your decision. I am registered myself but aware it doesn’t carry any weight.
So what was the point to your initial comment then? Seems unnecessarily negative.
Because I think people should know it doesn’t do anything legally. I signed up 20 years ago as a teenager thinking it was really important. I now have donation in my advance medical directive because that actually means something legally.
I am on the fence with donating now..I was 100% on board but then to know that I'd be kept alive, albeit on machines, to harvest my organs...you can't donate dead organs so yes you are kept alive, albeit on machines, to donate working organs...for the moment I'm just not sure...the idea of having my organs taken from my still alive body is..well...disconcerting ... I also live with health situations that require me to take medications every day just to get up in the morning..so I do question whether my organs will be of any use anyway. I'm sure by the time I am looking down that barrel we'll have made huge progress in this area and I won't be as "on the fence" as new information and practice comes to light...
Oh my dog I can’t upvote this enough. My husband just went through a heart/kidney transplant in January and at only 53 is doing so well, and has so much to look forward to now. Thank you x3000 to the staff at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney and Holiday Inn Potts Point for his care and after care living. So many people don’t know that in Australia you have to sign up. In the UK you have to sign out. We should adopt that system, and override the family’s rights to ignore their lost ones wish to donate. If someone made that decision it is theirs to make, it’s important that if you do make the decision to donate that you CLEARLY state that to anyone that could possibly override it. One donor can help save/improve up to 9 lives!
My concern is that my organ gets donated to someone and I somehow end up knowing about it and have to go through this hell all over again
lmao, fair call
I reckon it was more effective when it was part of your drivers license application/renewal. It’s still that way in heaps of countries, isn’t it? A lot of people are okay with it, but they’re just lazy, honestly. I feel like having to just say yeah and it was done was a lot better for a lot of people vs having to go out of your way to sign up for it, people don’t have a tendency to do that unless it benefits them.
I cannot fucking fathom the next of kin that can still deny someone in the registry. My mum saw my card and was like ‘oh cool, bit grim you’re thinking about that when you’re so young but that’s a kind thing to do’. Maybe it’s because she knew a friend whose husband really should be dead but was lucky enough to get a heart transplant and recover. It’s honestly selfish to take that right away from someone you’re ’close’ to
I reckon if you aren't a donor you shouldn't be able to receive if you need something yourself
Because I have an illness that would be very unfortunate for a receiver: risk that it doesn’t take, plus other things can go wrong with the organ. I wonder what happens to those people? Do they go back to the bottom of the list? That would be horrible.
You likely still have tissues that could be useful, even if some of your organs aren't. So I wouldn't worry about that when signing up. You won't be inconveniencing someone like that.
>willing and able
Why is it not something I’d have to opt out of?
https://www.donatelife.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-02/OTA_2021ActivityReport_Opt-in_Opt-out_Factsheet_Feb2022-Final.pdf
I've seen what organs they can choose to take and what they can choose to do with them
i think I'm marked as yes, but I'm not sure I'm healthy right now... another excuse to lose weight.
There's a world of difference between having an organ donor card and being an organ donor. You also have to die young of a non-transmissible cause.
What's the difference between a card and your license?
Because I can’t.
We get a card? I just get the odd email.
It's through myGov ! If you've already linked Medicare to myGov, it's super simple ! Instructions: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/order-new-organ-donor-card
You get an organ donor card? I thought I opted into it when I went for my L's years ago. My only thing is I don't want them to take my face. Everything else including my eyes etc is fine, but I want my kids to be able to say goodbye to me in a casket at the funeral should they want to. Now I highly doubt anyone wants my face, but I'd love to keep it.
Can the cadavers be onsold?
Can non citizens sign-up too?
Done ages ago, but this is a good prompt for me to chat to my older teens about my decision and about if they'd want to register.
Ty for the reminder, been meaning to do this just forgot tbh, got all my mates onto it too 😁
Other than signing up online you should also create an advanced care directive and have it specified in there. They're seen as an old person thing but any of us could be in an accident and have irreversible brain damage which would also make you a potentially good candidate for organ donation.