Method Organ Donation...

[graveflower]

Lately I've been starting to take the concept of my life coming to an end in the near future more seriously, and I've been going over what possible methods would be the most reasonable for me in my head.

I've always figured that once I was deceased, I'd give my organs away to someone else who needs them desperately. I still want to do that. But now I'm wondering if my top choices for CTB like SN will compromise my organs and make them unusable. :/

I'd rather go with the peace of mind that I'm going to help others continue to live.

 

[Dejected 55]

This has been discussed a lot... the bottom line is that suicide is virtually incompatible with organ donation. Many methods of suicide damage internal organs. Even the methods that do not inherently damage you has the problem of you don't want someone to interrupt you and stop you from dying BUT once you die your organs are useless. You'd have to have a death that doesn't damage organs via the method AND time everything so perfectly that rescue workers arrive just in time to preserve your organs without stopping you from dying. I don't think anybody has ever pulled that off successfully.

 

[Forveleth]

You can not donate organa once you are fully dead. Organs are harvested from people still alive, but brain dead. Once emergency workers find you without a pulse, they will not take your organs.

 

[graveflower]

This has been discussed a lot... the bottom line is that suicide is virtually incompatible with organ donation. Many methods of suicide damage internal organs. Even the methods that do not inherently damage you has the problem of you don't want someone to interrupt you and stop you from dying BUT once you die your organs are useless. You'd have to have a death that doesn't damage organs via the method AND time everything so perfectly that rescue workers arrive just in time to preserve your organs without stopping you from dying. I don't think anybody has ever pulled that off successfully.

Aw, shucks. That makes sense. That's a little disappointing to read but now that you bring that up it's kind of a, "oh duh" moment for me. I think I'll have to make a decision regarding that. Thanks for the insight. :)

You mentioned that this has been discussed a lot- I think there's something bittersweet in how so many people even at their lowest are still thinking about helping others.

 

[Dejected 55]

Yeah, I mean it shows a lot of people who want out of this world still want to be of benefit to others if they can. This sort of thing is one aspect of being in favor of assisted suicides because you would be in a hospital situation where they could allow you to die peacefully in an environment where they would be equipped to preserve your organs for donation.

Randomly... there was a TV show years ago called "Tru Calling" with Eliza Dushku and Zach Galifianakis and the gist of it was that Eliza's character and Zach worked in the morgue and at the end of each day a body would come in that would "speak" to her and the day would "reset" with her having the goal to try and save that person. But some episodes had a twist.

The episode this makes me think of.... there's a robbery at the beginning of the episode and she keeps averting it and then there's a little girl in the hospital in need of a heart transplant and she keeps dying for lack of a match. Sometimes her father also died. The day resets a bunch of times until she finally figures out that the only way for her to save the girl is for the father to die so that his daughter can have his heart... but in the original version of the day he had been killed in the robbery being shot through the heart. So... she has to manage to stop him from getting shot in the heart without actually saving his life so that he dies but his heart can be preserved for his daughter. IT's a weirdly tragic/beautiful plot that unfolds in an interesting way.

The show was good in general, I thought, but it was cancelled fairly early in its 2nd season just as some things were getting interesting.

 

[graveflower]

For sure. The fact that I can't seem to do both frustrates me. I'm a perfectly healthy 20something woman, and I'm in a demographic where there are likely numerous potential recipients. It'd be completely wasteful but I understand why they wouldn't wanna harvest my organs after they've already started the post mortem process. I guess in the meantime I'll do what I can. I'm on the bone marrow/stem cell donor registry + give blood when I'm not anemic. :P

Interesting connection you made there. I think I've heard of that show before but I don't believe I gave it a shot- I have the personality type where I can only obsessively invest myself into a new show once I get into it. Seems they always cancel the good ones before they have the chance to flourish.

As for the description of that episode, the only thing that particularly comes to mind for me is the trade-off in everything. Especially more serious matters like giving another chance at life to someone else. I can only imagine the feelings one would have knowing that their life-saving gift came at the cost of someone else, even through entirely accidental circumstances. A personal anecdote but my relative's first husband was killer in a head-on collision with a semi. He was a donor. (I suppose this different circumstance is where I was misled to think I could maybe do the same but I presume he died while the EMTs were on scene.) But given the nature of the accident, they could only salvage his eyes- or parts of it- not sure about the specific details- to donate. My relative received a heartfelt letter from the recipient. Think part of my point here is to loop around to a general acknowledgement of how precious and finite our lives are, and how these exchanges touch so many people. Just like you said: tragic and beautiful.