These days, Drew is a healthy, happy 8-year-old.
But when he was 17 months old, his mother told members of the Chattanooga Civitan Club on Friday, “I knew my baby was sick. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but I knew he was sick.”
The diagnosis, when it came, was devastating. Drew had cancer, and it was destroying his liver. He needed chemotherapy for the cancer. And he needed a new liver.
After successfully completing chemotherapy, Drew was put on the waiting list for a donor organ. Everywhere she went, his mother carried a beeper, hoping for the call notifying her that a liver had been found for her son.
The call came two months later, “the longest two months of my life,” his mother recalled. And the following day, Drew received the donor liver that saved his life.
“I knew that in order for Drew to live, another child had died,” his mother said. “So every year on June 22 (the date the donor child was killed in an accident) we say a prayer for that child. The next day, we celebrate. Drew really has two birthdays now: April 19, the day he was actually born, and June 23, the day he received the liver that saved his life.”
Friday, Drew’s mother joined other representatives of Tennessee Donor Services – Chattanooga in asking area residents to check the box on the back of their driver’s license that indicates they want to be an organ donor.
Or, if they choose, they can contact the organization at 756-5736 and ask for more information about becoming a donor.
Currently, there are more than 96,000 people across the nation on the waiting list for donor organs. Almost 2,000 of them live in Tennessee.
It is as important for people to sign up to be organ donors to discuss their decision with their families as it is for them to sign the donor card, since the family will be consulted before any decision is made on whether to harvest organs.
For more information, or to sign up as a donor, go to www.dcidonor.org.