Editorial: Donating now, or later, can be lifesaver

Chris Doing of Carpentersville and Kalin Koychev of Wheeling are two very special men. Both stepped forward to help a young boy they'd never met have a better life. Both allowed a surgeon to remove from them a perfectly good kidney to be transplanted into little Nathan Saavedra.

Providing money for a cause is one thing; providing your time is another. But these two men gave of themselves in the most literal sense.

Doing's kidney lasted only five months in the Carpentersville boy before it folded on itself in March 2011, lost blood supply and had to be removed. But he said he didn't regret having gone through it.

Time will tell whether Koychev's kidney, transplanted a week ago into Nathan, who suffers from a birth defect that causes blockages in his urinary tract that lead to kidney damage, will do the trick.

Live organ donors indeed are a special breed. They can donate a kidney, a partial liver, lobes of a lung, a pancreas, a section of intestine. Livers regenerate; the remaining kidney grows to take on the duty of two. And donor organizations are quick to point out that donating an organ doesn't mean one's life will be any shorter or less fulfilling.

The Mayo Clinic, which does more than 1,000 transplant operations a year, notes that the risk to a living kidney donor is a third to one-half of one percent. Nationally, the average 3-year survival rate for an adult receiving a kidney from a living donor is 96 percent.

That's a pretty high risk-reward ratio.

Still, it's a scary prospect and not for everyone. To qualify, one needs to be a reasonably close biological match, be between 18 and 60 years old and be in excellent health. And that's just for people who choose to donate to a family member, friend or complete stranger.

Live organ donation is a very big commitment, and many people are understandably skittish about it. After all, it is major surgery and there can be complications.

But as long as it isn't anathema to one's religious beliefs, the commitment and complications don't apply to donating organs after you're dead and no longer need them.

According to Donate Life America, more than 113,000 people in the United States are waiting for a transplant, 1,800 of them children. More than 28,000 organ transplants were performed last year and more than 46,000 corneas were transplanted.

Wouldn't you want to know that once you've passed on that you've left someone with the gift of sight or life? Wouldn't you want your loved ones to know that you're living after a fashion in someone else?

As medical technology improves, so grows the need for organs and other tissue. There is no better, no easier way, to ensure a meaningful legacy than to sign up to be an organ donor.

Go to donatelife.net to register.