This article in the LA Times about a guy declared dead before he was dead is one reason why I’m not an organ donor.
A man whose family agreed to donate his organs for transplant upon his death was wrongly declared brain-dead by two doctors at a Fresno hospital, records and interviews show.
Only after the man’s 26-year-old daughter and a nurse became suspicious was a third doctor, a neurosurgeon, brought in. He determined that John Foster, 47, was not brain-dead, a condition that would have cleared the way for his organs to be removed, records of the Feb. 21 incident show.
I don’t want Cyndi or Lydia to have to worry about something like that. The article goes on to explain another reason I have for not being an organ donor:
Foster, an auto mechanic, collapsed Feb. 18 and was diagnosed with an inoperable Pontine bleed, a catastrophic hemorrhage in his brain stem with almost no hope of recovery.
Hours later, hospital personnel alerted the California Transplant Donor Network the organ procurement group for much of Central and Northern California that he was a potential candidate for organ donation. Such notification is routine.
After Sanchez agreed to donate, she said, she got calls “at least twice a day” from the organ group, saying: “We have to get the body parts in a certain time. Your dad can be a life-saver to someone else. How is he doing today? Did he go up or down?”
Cyndi or Lydia will have enough on their mind if something ever comes to this point. I don’t want them to have to put up with people hounding them at a time like this.