Organ donors needed

1 person’s good will can help 50 others

By Kristy MacKaben, For the Mirror
The morning before Mary Alice King received a liver transplant, she made snow angels in the yard with her grandson Joseph King.

It was Feb. 17, 2003, and there was almost 2 feet of snow on the ground.

“The angels were really looking down on me because they called me that night about the transplant,” said King of South Hills.

King, 67, had been placed on a waiting list for a liver transplant a month before that phone call. When she was diagnosed with primary biliary cirrhosis of the liver seven years ago, the disease, which progresses slowly and has no cure, was in stage three. Stage four requires a liver transplant.

“I wouldn’t be here without a liver transplant,” King said.

Livers and kidneys are the most commonly needed organs by people awaiting transplants, but one organ donor possibly can save or enhance the lives of 50 people. Tissue and eye donations also are needed but are not as common.

More than 6,700 people are awaiting organ transplants in Pennsylvania, and the state is seeking donors.

To encourage more people to register as organ donors, a Web portal was launched this summer by the departments of Health and Transportation, the Center for Organ Recovery and Education and the Gift of Life Donor Program.

The portal allows state residents to sign up online. Since June, 1,000 people registered at www.donatelife-pa.org to become organ donors.

“We’ve had a great response. We’re delighted with the number of people who have elected to go online and sign up,” said Holly Bulvony, director of corporate communication and public education for CORE.

About 500,000 Pennsylvania residents are registered as organ donors, but Bulvony said more are needed.

“We would love 100 percent. It’s a personal decision, and we understand and respect that,” she said. “We do ask that people have a discussion with family before they designate themselves as a donor.”

King said she is grateful to the family of her donor, an 18-year-old girl from Tennessee.

“It’s a wonderful gift I received, but I also feel bad that somebody had to die for me to receive that gift,” she said.

King, who started volunteering with CORE a year after her transplant, said young people often are the most receptive to registering as organ donors.

“[They have] heard it on the news or know somebody who’s had a transplant,” King said. “The people I have the most problems with are people in their 50s and 60s because they didn’t grow up with this.”

Media attention to organ donations and transplants has helped to raise awareness, Bulvony said. The number of organ donors had doubled since 1994, when Pennsylvania started regulating organ donation.

She said the Web site is expected to increase awareness. Pennsylvania is one of the first states to launch a Web site for residents to sign up as organ donors.

Registering online takes about 90 seconds, she said, by visiting www.donatelife-pa.org, then clicking on the “Sign Up Now” icon.