A man's perception is his reality. The easiest way to change your reality is to change your perception.
----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------
This is my understanding:
There are designated transplant facilities, some specializing in particular organs. Every state has at least one, some better than others, many associated with universities, or there's one just over the state line. (No, your local community hospital is unlikely to be a transplant center.)
Lists of people who need transplants are kept by the transplant centers. They examine and test you for suitability and if you are approved by their board, you are put on the list for that center and that state, and it expands outward by distance, so you are also on the national list.
Organs are are doled out within the state of origin (where the donor died) first, going to the nearest transplant center, then to other centers in the state, then within the region, then it spreads out nationally. So if you are on the list in Pennsylvania, you'll get first dibs on organs in Pennsylvania. You'd get one from Virginia only if there was no match in Virginia.
In other words, one major factor in your priority on the lists is location.
Some states tend to have more patients on wait lists than organ donors. Other states have more donors than patients on the waiting lists. Since each center wants to do their own testing and records review, the more money you have, the more centers' lists you can go on. It's to your advantage to find the states where donors outnumber patients, and get approved by a center in that state, and to get on as many centers' lists as possible. Obviously, it is best to be on lists at centers all over the US.
In order to actually GET the organ, you have to be able to get to the center within X hours of notification. That's why people who need an organ will actually move to the city with the transplant center to wait. When a match is found, the best and neediest match who is on the center's list AND shows up at the door soonest gets it. Having access to a private jet to get to centers in far-flung states makes that a lot more feasible.
And that's why rich people get organs before poor people. They have been approved by more centers, are on more centers' lists, and they can get to the centers quickest.
(Um, also, they can positively or negatively affect the center's fundraising, but, um, we won't mention that.)
When a very wealthy person doesn't get an organ in time, it's frequently because either they didn't make the effort, or they have a rare genetic makeup.
Re the age cutoff being based on overall health - Cheney has a VERY bad health record. It's a miracle that he's made it this far. Perhaps the age of the heart he was given (60?) was a factor. You don't put a brand new motor in a 15-year-old junker, nor a 200K-mile motor in a 2-year-old car.
.
4 comments:
Oh, man, they gave him a sixty-year-old heart? Really? Ha. Good luck with that, Dick.
Yeah. The donor was 60 or 61.
Jay was 49 when he died, and he was an organ donor, but none got used because
1. He'd had too much chemo, so his organs were not the healthiest,
2. He was in multiple organ failure when he died, so again, they weren't the healthiest, and
3. the one that surprised me the most - the hospital he died in was not equipped to harvest and transport organs at 1 am, so even if he'd been an otherwise healthy auto accident victim, his organs would have been wasted.
Silk - thank you so much for writing this. I have a dear friend who may be needing a liver transplant at some point and the docs are starting to talk to him about getting on lists... this helps to understand what is going on. How did you learn so much about it (besides that you're so wicked smart)
Rochelle, thanks for the compliment, but I just read a lot.
Post a Comment