The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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September 9, 2010

Your View: Organ donors’ families appreciate acknowledgment

J. Willis Wesley, Waterville

When I read articles such as “Cookbook to raise money for youngster’s transplant” in last Friday’s Free Press, I am compelled to share an organ donor family’s perspective. By doing this, I hope that some organ recipient and his/her respective family will experience a smooth convalescence free of any reticence or guilt for having accepted the donated organ.

We lost our daughter, Alison, at the age of 25 from a stroke. When Alison was declared “brain dead”, organ procurement personnel invited us to consider donating her organs for transplantation. Thus in 1997, we became members of one side of the transplantation equation.

Donor families were not provided with much support service then as they receive today. Correspondence between recipients and donor families was not encouraged. Today such contact is strongly suggested.

We did not receive any acknowledgment from any of Alison’s recipients until almost six years post transplant. One of her kidney recipients did send us a thank you letter. We have been told that recipients are grateful, but they just do not know what to say.

Here is how I want to put your mind at ease. Life is a gift, a gift from our creator. That gift is endowed with spirit and God’s love. Eventually, when that life ends, the spirit returns to the creator, but God’s love remains with us as a legacy of the departed loved one to cherish. The donated organ is a “gift of life.”

Donor families may grieve in the near term, but in the longer term they are more in need of consolation than condolence.

A note of acknowledgment from a recipient not only will set direction of the grieving process, but more so acts as consolation and comfort.

 

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