By Jo ana Kubiak
A couple of months ago columnist Michael Tittinger wrote about the importance of checking off the box that says YES to organ donation.
Tittinger made good points about the ease and importance of just putting a check mark in a little box that could save lives. One would be not aware, or care one way or another what the fate of their kidneys was when it is time for that check mark to take effect.
Until recently I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly. It makes no sense to me what people are holding onto their organs for.
The other day I was having a conversation about this with a friend of mine. She is married and has two children. I asked her if she was an organ donor. She told me that she nor her husband was an organ donor.
She said with tears forming in her eyes that if anything would happen to her husband, she would want all of him whole and know where he was.
“If someone else got his heart they would have to come live with me,” she said, half joking.
Another co-worker came by and got caught up in the conversation. He mentioned that his son passed away a few years ago. He related to us that when his son’s body was in the morgue he requested that they did not cut him open.
I understood their reasons for being wary about organ donation and they admitted that if a loved one was in need, they would want someone to donate their organs.
The point of this letter is that I do not think that this bipolar thinking is unusual, making that little box not so easy to check off as Tittinger makes it out to be.
The fact is that many people who do have themselves down as an organ donor end LETTERS, from page 4 up not being one because it is still the family’s final decision — the family who loves them that was just told that the donor in question just passed away. When the doctor approaches, chopping them up and divvying out the person’s bodyparts is not an easy decision and more likely one that is not made.
There is legislation being discussed in some cities, or maybe it is a national movement, now that will allow the check that the donor in question made on their license application to trump the family-in-grief’s feelings about the body of the deceased.
I think that this is wise considering the most difficult feelings and loss of clear thinking happen at times of such loss.
I still agree with Michael Tittinger that everyone should be a donor, but now I do not agree with what he talks about when it comes to the ease of the check mark, or the ease to honor a check mark that has been made before death, especially for those who have never experienced the need of an organ before.
Maybe the problem is not simple ignorance or laziness of people when they are filing for their license. I think that the problem is much deeper.
How many people would be willing to be inconvenienced because their spouse is helping another? Are husbands happy if dinner is not ready until 8 p.m. because his wife is out cooking at a soup kitchen? Are wives pleased that they have to wait 30 minutes more to be picked up from work because their husband drives their elderly neighbor to therapy at 5 p.m.?
I told my friend, acknowledging that I had the fortune of not being in the midst of such a decision, that if I had to give the doctors the OK to share my husband’s organs for the good of others, I would be proud. I would be proud of my husband to be able to continue to help others, even in death.
The widespread resistance to organ donation is not indicative of people’s laziness or misconception of how organ donation works. I think that it is an attitude that is rampant, not just when filling out applications. It is the attitude when we see others struggling and we do not practice the pain of our inconvenience to help them in our daily lives. If we practiced such an attitude on a daily basis, we are better prepared when death is so near.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 25, 2003. Read the original PDF.