On October 14, the World Organ, Tissue and Transplant Donation Day, a date to raise awareness about the importance of this altruistic gesture that saves lives. The person who donates and the person who receives an organ make up two sides of the same coin and form an indelible bond, although they almost never meet. We spoke with Abelardo Sanchezwho chairs the Galician Airiños Transplant Association and was a transplant recipient, and with Luis M.who donated part of his liver to his daughter.
The donation of organs and tissues is a gesture of solidarity, considered “the greatest act of kindness among human beings,” highlights the National Transplant Organization. The most common donations are those that occur from a deceased person to a patient in needalthough there are also living donations. In this case, transplant recipients are almost always direct relatives of the donors, although in the case of blood or bone marrow donations can be made by any healthy person between 18 and 60 years of age.
Raising awareness on this issue is still very important since The organs of deceased people can only be donated if their family consents., or if that person left it in writing in their will before they died. And in 2015 in Galicia “We had family negative rates of potential donors of around 30%,” details Sánchez. Although thanks to all the campaigns carried out “we have now dropped from that 30% to 13%, below the national average which is around 15%.”
“Only 3% of all people who die are possible donors, and if of that 3%, 30% refused to donate, the number of lives that could be saved is enormous. A single donor can save up to seven lives. We must ensure that the majority of society is inclined to donate organs so that lives can be saved,” he highlights.
“Someone dies so that you can be saved”
Sánchez himself has experienced firsthand what it is like to receive an organ from a donor. When he was 42 years old They detected him in blood tests Hepatitis B virus, which they discovered she had inherited from her mother during pregnancy. “They told me to lead a normal life but a few years passed and I had an outbreak and in the blood tests they saw that the GPT was 1600, when its maximum is 40. That is truly outrageous,” he says.
At that time they gave him a treatment that lasted for several years, “but at a certain point I became a little upset again and they told me that the medication was not working and they stopped it, and of course, the virus took over. nachas”. In the process, she later detected, “There was a bit of negligence“.
Sánchez began to feel unwell again in April 2003, when he was enjoying Holy Week with his son, who at that time was studying in Madrid “and I didn’t want to upset him,” he says. However, he had no choice but to go to the hospital in Ferrol: “They saw my state of deterioration and transferred me to Coruñawhere they tried to give me a new treatment, but it no longer had an effect.
The last option left was a transplant and given the severity of his condition “they gave me 15 days to live,” and they put him first on the waiting list in Galiciaso the first liver available in the community would be for him.
Sánchez then entered a race against time waiting to receive a liver from someone who died. That is the double side of the coin of organ donation. “It’s sad to say, but at that time a lot of people died from traffic accidents and the doctor told you ‘let’s see if we’re lucky and someone shows up this weekend.’ It’s sad to think about it like that, but it’s reality. You always have that in your mind, that someone has to die so that you can be saved.“, account.
Finally an organ appeared before those 15 days that was compatible with him. “When they told me there was an organ, I broke down”, remember. And, luckily, the procedure went well: “They transplanted me, I was in recovery, in the resuscitation part, then they transferred me to the ward and in 15 days I was home.”
Now Sánchez has “a super normal life.” “As normal, I do sports, I go swimming…”, although their vision of life is not the same: “What I do believe is a general theme of all transplant recipients is that it completely changes your philosophy of life.” . Normally we are worried about trivial things and we stop giving importance to everything and worry about the basics.. Now, while I’m talking to you, I’m on a farm that I have looking at the countryside and I’m enjoying the little things,” she describes on the other end of the phone.
However, once this process was finished, Sánchez wanted to give back a little of what had been given to him and that is why he joined Airiños, which he now presides over. From there he works for get the majority of society inclined to donate organsas well as to accompany patients and families and support medical professionals.
“I said, ‘they have saved my life and in some way I have to give back to society a minimal part of what society gave me, which is neither more nor less than life,'” he adds.
“My daughter celebrates her birthday on transplant day”
Luis M. is on the other side of this coin that is organ donation, being a donor for one of his twin daughters, who was born with a rare disease that affected the liver.
The process began as soon as the little ones were born back in 2009. Two days after giving birth they detected that one of them had a liver problem and they transferred her to the Hospital de la Paz in Madrid to see if there was the possibility of performing a transplant. . “For a year or so we were going back and forth with recurring income, because my daughter’s liver was not working. He had a syndrome that affects the liver and causes the bile ducts to not function“, he reports.
The girl entered the waiting list, but given the seriousness of the situation, the doctors themselves offered them the possibility of making a living donation. Both he and his wife accepted, although finally Luis was chosen for the process according to the doctors’ criteria.
There began “a long process of testing,” since the process to make a living donation is very rigorous. “You have to go through psychologists who assess that you are qualifiedalso a judge who has to prove that you are not going to make that donation with interests other than saving someone’s life, and you also have to pass a hospital ethics committee,” he explains.
At that time they also explained to him the risks of the intervention where they would remove a third of his liver, among them were “a small chance of dying, and a greater chance of having liver problems in the future.”. Luis fondly remembers the doctor who reassured him by telling him thatThe probability of dying is greater driving a car.
“If you weigh the pros and cons, the pros are very few,” he says.
Finally the day of the operations arrived, which were carried out almost simultaneously in two different hospitals. His daughter was undergoing surgery in La Paz and he was undergoing surgery at the 12 de Octubre Hospital. Luis spent eight hours “and I didn’t find out anything, in fact I had a very good postoperative period.” He only had a little stitches, but when he thought about complaining “I remembered my daughter, who was only 2 years old and had more stitches than me,” he recalls.
Luis has had an “absolutely normal” life since then. However His daughter was unlucky enough to contract an infection in the hospital that caused organ rejection.so the following year they had to perform a transplant again, this time from a donor, another child who died in those days.
“The girl was already very bad because we had been there for almost a year and she had gotten much worse and the truth is that her life was at serious risk, but we were fortunate that some parents, I will always remember them, lost their little son from the Same age as my daughter and they donated all her organs. With their option they gave life to my daughter“, he says, still excited.
Luis will always feel grateful to those parents who decided to donate their son’s organs at such a difficult time. Thanks to that altruistic decision, his daughter is now 14 years old “and doing great.” Now every year they celebrate their birthdays on transplant day. “Every year we celebrate my daughter’s birthday, which is the day of the transplant, because she lived that day again,” she says.
