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Organ Donation Part 2: Talk to your family!

After reading the comments on the post I shared yesterday (World Organ Donation Day: Are you registered as an organ donor? Are you SURE?), I thought I’d do a follow-up for those of you who might have missed a key point that was made by some of my readers.

When it comes to the issue of organ donation,
talk to your family about your wishes!

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See, I was under the impression that giving consent and being registered with your regional organization was all you needed to do to become an organ donor; however, after some further investigation triggered by those post comments I discovered that this is NOT enough! The next step is to make sure that your family members are aware of your wishes… because, depending on the rules or procedures followed in your region, the final decision as to whether or not you will be an organ donor may ultimately be left up to them.

Did you know this? I didn’t.

Honestly, I can’t say that I particularly like it – or even understand it, quite frankly. The choice as to whether (or not) to be an organ donor should be made by the person in possession of the organs to be (or not to be) donated, shouldn’t it? And one’s decision should be respected regardless of whether or not the family agrees, no?

To say that this issue gets under my skin is a bit of an understatement, actually!

But whether or not I like it, or think it’s fair, that’s apparently the way it is – which makes having that talk with your family all the more important. So that’s what I did today: I talked to each of the members of my immediate family – husband, parents, and sister – and made sure that they’re aware of my wish to be an organ donor.

Now I encourage you to do the same. Hopefully your family will be as supportive of your decision as my family is of mine!

Have you talked to your family about your wishes?
Please share!

NaBloPoMo August 2014

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.