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National Donate Life Month

Transplants | Last Active: Apr 13, 2021 | Replies (9)

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@mauraacro

There really isn't much on the national website, the local website links to the national one. Links don't give much info besides registering as a donor through DMV or their organization. I don't think that donors need a party or prizes but detailed information about donation would be great.

Is a deceased donor easier, cheaper and/or better than a living donor? Is that why there isn't as much information about living donors? What I knew about live donation was mostly untrue and finding information, besides the typical medical procedure, took a lot of searching.

I'd have to go through my post history but I don't think I even found Connect until after my 3 day evaluation and then I needed to make a post to find info about the donor side of things. I didn't know about paired donation until my 3rd eval day. If I hadn't matched my recipient in the initial blood draw, I would have been done with the process at that point and no one would have gotten my spare kidney.

I give all of the credit to the daughter of my recipient for making it easy for me to find out and start the process of donating. She gave a brief history of her mother, included a link to inquire about donation at Mayo and kept in touch through the process to make sure I had questions answered.

For my part, I talk to people about donation and how easy and rewarding it was. I post about it. I hijack people's twitter posts about donation and offer to answer questions.

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Replies to "There really isn't much on the national website, the local website links to the national one...."

Guerilla advocacy, @mauraacro. I love it. Your experiences about trying to find information really resonate and should get to the ears of the promoters and marketers of organ donation. Have you had a chance to talk to people at Donate Life?

@taybro4, working at Be The Match I bet you have something to add to this discussion too. Is Be The Match in April National Donate Life Month activities?