Monday, February 27, 2006

Why you should be on organ donors list

Today's Globe and Mail:

At 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2005 Jennifer Martens was awakened in the middle of the night and told to get to an Edmonton hospital right away. Once there, she was brought to an operating room for a cesarean section; four hours later, in an operating room down the hall, surgeons anesthetized her newborn son and sawed open his chest.

There's more: Xander Dolski, the baby in question, had to receive a heart within hours after birth or face certain death. And the donor heart needed to be transplanted within six hours of being removed from the deceased donor infant. Any longer and the heart would be prone to failure.

Xander was whisked to the operating room at 8:10 a.m., where he was anesthetized. By 9:15 a.m., he was put on the heart-bypass machine, a type of artificial circulation. His chest retracted open; he was there, waiting for a donor organ to arrive. When that organ came, it was a thing of beauty, with four working chambers. And following the transplant, Xander became proof that medical miracles aren't just the stuff of prime-time television, but of real life after receiving a transplant at the tender age of eight hours.

Today, eight weeks after his birth, the robust breastfeeding boy weighs 9 pounds, 1 ounce, and the ruler-straight scar that runs from the top of his chest to his midriff has already started to fade to mauve.

2 Comments:

At 6:38 p.m., Blogger The City Gal said...

wait a second! Next of kin can veto my own will?

 
At 7:22 a.m., Blogger The City Gal said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 

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