Piedmont Macon raises Donate Life Flag

If you ever meet an organ recipient and you hear how powerfully it has affected them, how deeply, deeply grateful they are for every day when they wake up and they're alive another day. I believe that many people will be touched by those stories and they will feel a conviction to make the decision to register to be an organ donor,” said Elizabeth Larkins, Chief Nursing Officer for Piedmont Macon Medical Center and Piedmont Macon North Hospital.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – It’s Donate Life Month and Piedmont Macon North Hospital and Piedmont Macon Medical Center celebrated on Thursday by raising the Donate Life Flag.

According to Piedmont the raising of the flag is to promote organ donations in Middle Georgia and according to the LifeLink Foundation more than 109,000 people across the country are on the transplant waiting list with 4,700 of those being from Georgia.

“It’s often the case that when patients are in critical care, they come in very sick and we offer as much hope as we can,” said Elizabeth Larkins, Chief Nursing Officer for Piedmont Macon Medical Center and Piedmont Macon North Hospital. “Sometimes people get well and that’s the news we want to give everybody. Sometimes we can’t save people. Despite the best technology and scientific developments and advances in medical care. When that happens and we realize that no matter what we do, someone’s going to die. Then we try to provide the family the opportunity to make meaning out of the end of life by participating in organ donation. If we know that was the patient’s wishes or if their wishes were unknown.”

“Trauma is the number one reason why young, healthy people who are organ donation candidates end up having these conversations, but it can happen because of a heart attack, a stroke, you know, sepsis, anything that’s a sudden onset of acute critical care illness where someone was otherwise healthy and then suddenly their life is cut short.”

“I had a friend in high school, actually, who died just a few weeks before graduation. He was hit by a drunk driver. He had a full scholarship to college and was going to be the first person in his family to go to college and one day he was alive and the next day he was gone and his parents donated his organs and visiting with them in the weeks and the months after his death, it was clear to me how it made them believe that even though he didn’t get to have the life that they wanted for him, that other people got to have the lives that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. They were very spiritual people and they felt like, you know, God led them to donate his organs so that other people could live and they actually formed strong connections with the recipients of a couple of his organs and so I went and registered then as a graduating high school senior, even before I had any idea that I was going to become a nurse and I’ve been on the organ registry ever since.”

“I think that everyone has to arrive at their own conviction about it. So I wouldn’t want anyone to feel pressured, but I would encourage people to go online and read the stories or watch the videos of both families who have made the decision for donation, because that’s who’s here, right? Those patients who donated don’t get to tell the story when they’re gone. It’s their family and then recipients. If you ever meet an organ recipient and you hear how powerfully it has affected them, how deeply, deeply grateful they are for every day when they wake up and they’re alive another day. I believe that many people will be touched by those stories and they will feel a conviction to make the decision to register to be an organ donor,” said Larkins.

According to Piedmont, since 1986, the Piedmont Transplant Institute in Atlanta has been recognized as one of the nation’s most successful transplant programs, performing over 5,000 transplant surgeries and according to the LifeLink Foundation anyone can be a potential donor, regardless of age, or medical history, potentially saving multiple lives in the process.

For more information check out Piedmont and LifeLink Foundation websites.