by Roy Exum
posted May 19, 2008
 Roy Exum |
Years ago I took the necessary steps to dedicate my carcass to the Vanderbilt Medical School in hopes somebody might learn something from it that will help another poor struggler in some way. I’ve got some great friends in the funeral business and I don’t mean to deprive them of selling a box, but my bigger deal is using what is left behind to teach, to learn, to help.
Now there is a caveat in my deal. At the very moment I croak, everybody understands I am to be rushed to a hospital and “harvested.” I want my eyes to be given to some little boy who has never seen a baseball coming sweet on a 3-2 count. I want my lungs to be given to some girl who has never been able to cheer for her Big Orange.
Give my kidney to a guy who will one day hold his girl friend’s hand and ask her to marry him and take my liver and give it to a preacher because … well, I hope when my time comes it won’t ever need any more whiskey or tobacco or deep-fried foods.
I have a friend who just had a kidney transplant. His pretty wife gave him one of hers and, as I write this, both of them are clicking on all cylinders. What is more beautiful than that? To me the process of organ transplantation is one of our greatest medical marvels and as science continues to get better, so will the process.
One easy way to do it is to sign the back of your driver’s license. Get a buddy to witness it and tell your folks you want to do it. I read an article in the Texas newspaper not long ago that had a picture of five smiling people, each of whom had gotten organs from a guy who was killed in an accident.
But the troubling thing is sometimes a donor doesn’t have a driver’s license with them during the crucial minutes after death and, if the state Department of Safety happens to be closed, there is no way to verify they have checked their license.
So now comes the news that late last month Tennessee became the 45th state to create an online registry through the state’s Donate Life Tennessee program. The online registry is legally binding and, if those with you at the time you ...um, expire ... are unsure of your intent, the registry will help clear any doubt.
By accessing a site called www.tndonorregistry.org you can immediately update your information and, if later on, your Aunt Matilda puts you on such a guilt trip you wind up thinking part of you will be inside some terrorist, you can get off the registry as easily as you get on.
There are some religious groups that frown on transplants, I am told, but curiously they allow their members to accept parts, just not give them. Maybe we can save the ones who will one day have a “revelation” that God’s people help one another anyway they can.
In today’s Nashville Tennessean there is a story about the new registry and it offers this hope; according to Janet Jarrard, who is in charge of public education, one donor “has the potential to save nine lives through organ donation and enhance up to 50 more lives with cornea and tissue donation.”
The article also offered another statistic. Right now there are over 2,000 people in Tennessee praying for a telephone call to tell them an organ is available. In 2007 there were 678 people who got transplants and 127 who died waiting for the phone to ring.
Now let’s look at it this way. You have a chance to make a difference in somebody else’s life right now. It’s in your billfold and it takes only a moment or two to fill out. If you don’t fall in the water with your wallet or if the ink doesn’t wear out on your license, you can quite literally save somebody else’s life with one of your parts that you no longer need.
Even better, the Donate Life Tennessee databank is hooked into the national system so if you’re doing a 25-to-life stretch for killing some guy in a bar down in Reno, the Nevada authorities will know you want to “give a life” instead of take one as you exit out of here.
I think it is the ultimate gift. I hope it will be a while before I personally get the chance, but if I thought my big toe could help a child walk or if my ear drum could let a guy finally hear his mother tell him she loves him … are you kidding me?
Please go to www.tndonorregistry.org right now and “do the paper work.” You won’t be able to hear those you help say thank you but, because I believe the way I do, the good Lord himself will handle that part of it just fine.
royexum@aol.com
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