By Dale Moore |
By Dale Moore |
|
In the year 2000, approximately 4700 deaths were recorded in Lucas County, Ohio. There are 223 persons in this area dying for lack of an organ transplant including 127 for a kidney, 26 for a heart, 13 for a liver, and 12 for a pancreas. Other individuals wait for a cornea transplant to give them sight. If just ten percent of those persons who died in Lucas County in 2000 had donated their vital organs, ALL of these stricken persons would have a chance to live, to see, or to escape the terrible discomfort of dialysis. But most potential organ donors chose not to do so! How many persons did make a donation? The Life Connection Center of Ohio in Toledo had a total of 22 donors from the Northwest Ohio area. In this age of medical miracles we have the opportunity to truly share life with another human being. Many of us can now offer healing to the sick, comfort to the terminally ill. We have the power to allow a parent life to watch a child graduate from high school. Your heart, transplanted to a dying young man may allow him the chance to develop a procedure to eradicate breast cancer. Your liver transplanted to a young woman may allow her to write another “Gone with the Wind.” Donating your body to the Medical College of Ohio, may offer a young medical student the opportunity to become a physician and a neurosurgeon who one day uses her skill to remove a brain tumor from your grandchild. Yet too many of us bury these gifts of life. Organs are encased in a steel casket in a vault and buried beneath six feet of earth to preserve them for… I’m not sure what we preserve them for. Eternity? I believe that the God, who created this mortal body can, and will, create a much better immortal one. And God will not need the clay of this earth to do so. I do wonder, however, what God would say about us burying the gifts of this body and thus denying life to a sister or brother. 4700 deaths! Some tragic! Each a real loss! Yet comfort can be found if we bring life to someone else. Before you lay the newspaper down and forget, why not call Life Connection at 1-800-262 5443 or the Medical College Of Ohio at 1-419-383-4126? When life is no longer a gift for you, give your gift of life to someone else.
And that’s my two cents worth |
