Sure, I'm an organ donor. Why wouldn't I be?
I just got a new driver's license, and I happened to be showing it to someone, who noticed the little heart that's placed on it, indicating that I'm a donor. She just wanted to both thank me and congratulate me for doing so; having worked in the medical field for a bit, she said that she knows the importance of signing up to be an organ donor.
The way I think of it is like this—if I were to die unexpectedly, it's not like I'd need my organs, right? I might as well help someone else live a longer life, if I can.
A quick Google search turned up a couple of interesting facts. The first is that almost a third of Americans are signed up to be organ donors when they die. That number actually surprised me; I actually thought it would've been lower, considering some people are so squeamish about the subject. Hopefully, as the years wear on, that percentage will become even higher, because of the second fact that I saw on that Google search--
21 Americans die every day because of a lack of suitable organs. That's almost 8,000 people a year or, to put it in terms that might be a little easier to understand, the population of the city of Houghton, plus a couple of hundred. That many people die in this country every year because of the lack of suitable donated organs.
Whenever there's a new (non-Covid) disease around and it kills two or three people, it seems like a huge chunk of the nation goes ape. Why don't huge chunks of the nation go ape when 2,500 times that number die on an annual basis? Like I said before, I realize this is a squeamish topic for people to think about. I know a lot of people don't want to consider what might happen when then die, and because of that refuse to even think about donating their organs. But wouldn't that be a fitting legacy to a life cut short—to help save the lives of a few or of many other people? Wouldn't that be a way to have your life remembered and honored?
At least that's what I would think. And that's why, for several decades now, I've been signed up to be an organ donor.
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