WGoNerd

April 27th, 2018 at 4:45 PM ^

No jokes no grudges.

I hope he gets a heart.

Let this be a call to arms for all the Michigan faithful.  We pride ourselves on our money cannon, because we understand that you can't take it with you, and it's important to help others when you can.

So I hope today you register as an organ donor, if you haven't already.  If the unthinkable happens you can save MULTIPLE lives by checking one little box.

Just like your money and material possesions, you can't take your organs with you, and it's important to help others when you can.

UMGoRoss

April 27th, 2018 at 5:35 PM ^

I have a brother who has been a paramedic for 15 years: have never heard anything remotely like that. I also have a father who has had a liver and kidney transplant.

I hope you never have to experience the agony of waiting for a loved one to get a much needed organ. So many folks die waiting which could be avoided Ignacio people checked one box when they were 16. I’ve also never heard of anyone who wasn’t listed as an organ donor ever turn down one when they needed it.

KO Stradivarius

April 27th, 2018 at 6:05 PM ^

Ugh, I agree, this comment is horrible.  This myth will apparently never go away. Is there no faith in mankind?  Do people watch too much TV?   We need more donors.  This BS doesn't help. 

My wife had kidney failure, and she got a kidney from an anonymous live donor in Minn.  We met him.  He donated while he's still alive, because he has 2 good kidneys.  Words cannot begin to express his unselfishness.  But others won't donate even after death. 

Obviously, a heart is different than a kidney (quantity 1 vs 2), but really?  You suck.

MGoFoam

April 28th, 2018 at 10:28 AM ^

I am a surgeon and, as a resident, did trauma in the ER and also did organ retrieval and transplants. This is absolutely false and extremely offensive to the people who work as hard and long as they do to help trauma patients.. Additionally, the only association EMTs have with the process is when they drive the organ retrieval team to/from the airport in the ambulance.

Magic_Fan

April 28th, 2018 at 11:56 AM ^

This is an important myth to dispel. As an ICU doc, I don’t know the patients’ organ donation status. Someone from my team is required to call Gift of Life about each dying patient. The Gift of Life team then contacts the patient’s family.

Gift of Life is the non profit group that manages organ donation for the state of Michigan. I’m on mobile so I can’t embed. Check the last question on this FAQ from their website for further verification.

http://www.giftoflifemichigan.org/about-donation/common-questions

Magic_Fan

April 28th, 2018 at 4:06 PM ^

When death is imminent or expected, then the team calls Gift of Life. The medical team’s primary duty is to the patient and their best interests. The transplant team’s primary interest is in the patient who needs a transplant. Gift of Life Acts as an objective intermediary.

1WhoStayed

April 28th, 2018 at 12:05 AM ^

Who mentioned THAT scenario!?

Please tell is why robot translplants are risky too because nobody mentioned that either!!!

Quite a leap from an ER doctor giving up too soon with an eye toward saving other lives.

And NO, I don’t believe that is a realistic reason for not registering as a donor.

MGoStretch

April 27th, 2018 at 9:29 PM ^

But on the infinitesimaly small chance you're right (you're not) if you're in bad enough shape that you're a potential organ donor, I'm gonna guess that you'd wish you were. Or, more likely, you wouldn't be having any conscious thoughts ever again if you were that close to being an actual donor.
Sincerely,
A doctor

Ps. ER docs don't murder people.
Ppss. This doesn't even make any sense, do you think an ER doc gets a bonus for every liver they "bring in" like some sort of recruiting bonus? Do you think they just collect a critically ill patient's heart while nobody is looking and then put it on eBay? Come on man, your bro's comment makes zero sense on any level, use your brain a little bit (before some murderous ER doctor breaks into your house and steals it right out of your skull while you're sleeping).

WichitanWolverine

April 27th, 2018 at 11:28 PM ^

I’ll admit that I was apparently grossly misinformed and will gladly take the lumps that I’ve gotten. I understand this is a very sensitive subject and I apologize for coming off as callous as I did.

However, I never implied anything as ridiculous as black market organ dealing. Let me propose a scenario to you: let’s say a doctor is aware that’s his critically-injured patient is an organ donor, and estimates he has a 10% chance of survival, while he also estimates he could save 5 other lives with their organs. You could easily see an argument that the “right” choice is donation.

If doctors are unaware of organ donor status, as other posters commented above, then my poInt is obviously moot, but I certainly never implied any maliciousness on the doctor’s part.

1WhoStayed

April 28th, 2018 at 12:14 AM ^

You did it again by prpposing a scenario where a doctor let’s someone die who had a > 0 chance to live in order to save 5 lives!

So you’re saying it’s not malicious because the doctor acted as God for the greater good? While technically correct, doesn’t make sense to me.

And it’s not really a “donation” if the doctor let’s you die to save another. The doctor can’t donate your organ FFS. He can KILL you by withholding care, but he can’t donate on your behalf.

mgoblue52

April 27th, 2018 at 10:45 PM ^

I logged in for the first time in awhile to downvote this. This is a very, very dangerous comment that will fuel this false narrative, may keep people from becoming donors, which will cost lives of people on transplant lists.

As a physician, part of my training involved spending time in ICUs and ERs; this absolutely DOES NOT come into play, and most of the time we only find out a patient is an organ donor after the decision is made to withdraw care.  Organs cannot survive long without blood flow, so many of the organs come from people who are brain dead, but are on a mechanical ventilator so the heart can continue to circulate blood through a dead body.  Then, surgeons must be mobilized to procure organs after a match is identified, etc.  It is logistically not possible for an emergency physician to determine a patient is an organ donor, allow the patient to die, procure the organs before they are nonfunctional, identify a transplant recipient, etc.  And yes, I am a registered organ donor.

1WhoStayed

April 28th, 2018 at 12:19 AM ^

Dude, the scenario he laid out answers your own question/point. Brain dead... life support... family weighing a decision... sometimes the organ donor topic may surface before a decision/sometimes after.

Nothing in his INFORMED post raises a question on whether proper care is given.

Jeez, you probably believe 9/11 was an inside job too!? Is that you Charlie Sheen?

Abe Froman

April 28th, 2018 at 2:18 AM ^

I am a former member of a surgical organ transplant recovery team. I worked for about a decade, procuring all types of organs and tissues. Your comments are misinformed and misleading. Statements like yours muddy the waters and keep many from becoming organ donors. Generally I can avoid the siren call of “someone’s wrong on the Internet,” but congratulations - your comment was so uninformed and potentially damaging that here I am replying at 2AM.

Patients are seen by medical professionals at hospitals. Nurses and doctors have NO IDEA if a patient is an organ donor as they work to save his or her life. It is only AFTER they have done all that they can to save that persons life that they finally consult the family or donor registry. Most injuries result in organs being ineligible for transplant. Only patients who are 100% BRAIN DEAD - which must be verified by a neurologist using diagnostic tools - can be elliglbe to donate.

The local organ procurement agency is contacted next. Generally they send a representative to the hospital to establish that the patient is eligible for donation, and after doing so begin the process of cataloguing the donors blood type and other immunological data. They then consult the match lists and begin contacting the hospitals that represent possible organ recipients. Once all of the organs have been matched, surgical procurement teams from the different reciepeint hospitals are dispatched to the donor hospital to simeltaneously remove the organs. In the case of some tissues like heart and lung, we have at maximum 4 hours from the time an organ is removed until it is sewn into a receipt and receiving a supply of oxygenated blood. Time is of the essence. Helicopters, ambulances, and jets are used to expedite the process as much as possible. It is VERY VERY RARE that a hospital treating an organ donor is the same facility that treats a reciepent. The local procurement agency acts as a third party and handles matching and thus absolutely prevents any gaming of the system.

Recapping:
1) the physician treating the donor has no knowledge of the patient’s status as an organ donor
2) the physician treating the donor has every incentive (ethical and legal) to all he or she can for the patient
3) the decision to donate only happens have the patient cannot be save
4) the local procurement agency handles the matching of organs and acts as a third party to avoid possible ethical conflicts
5) it is exceeding rare that the same hospital that treats a donor also treats the recipient.

Next time consider the implications of your comments regarding an ethical issue before you post and try googling the issue before Sharing it with the world. You may not realize it, but their are plenty of people who share your uninformed world view on this subject and insist on lobbying against donation by spreading lies and falsehoods. Every one is completely entitled to make the choice for themselves in regards to donate, but let’s at the minimum allow them the simple respect of making that decision with the correct information on the issue.

ToDefyTheFrizzleFry

April 27th, 2018 at 4:50 PM ^

Hopefully he gets a new heart and recovers. Also, was the paragraph about his failings w/ the Lions really necessary in an article about his serious health condition, Detroit News? Good lord that was tasteless.

m1jjb00

April 27th, 2018 at 6:52 PM ^

Nah, just kidding.  I take my sports seriously; they're important to me, but there are more important things.

As for the discussion above, I've heard people say those things about not being an organ donor just in case.  I can imagine, dying going to heaven, and St. Peter saying, "Dude, why did you check that box on your license.  We were about ready to swoop in, but by the time we got there, Dr. Moneybux had already picked you cleann."  If that happened, I'd laugh.  "Oh well, joke's on me."