This spring say "yes!" to organ donation

I had gotten use to seeing her devoured with tubes, I.V. drips, blood pressure cuffs, listening to the clicking of "Brutus" her artificial heart pump, and various beeping monitors all functioning for Mikayla's failing heart.

She had been diagnosed with idiopathic cardio-myopathy, a little-understood malfunctioning of the heart valves that without a transplant would be fatal. Her doctors had told us to be hopeful, but realistically explained the odds of this day never coming. "Many people die waiting" was the only phrase I remembered from that conversation.

I didn't understand very much about organ donation but I did know that without a new heart, my little sister would die. Words cannot describe the feeling that came over my body. I was terrified. I couldn't bear the thought of living the rest of my life without her. I sat there trying to remember the last words I had said to her -- were they sweet and kind, were they the words I would want her going into the next live remembering me as?

Looking at her after the transplant, on a day I thought would never come, free of any tubes and being silently monitored, I cried. Mikayla would live! I sat pondering what a difference one person donating their organs had made in our lives; Because of someone's selfless decision to become an organ donor, their heart would beat to save my sisters life and answer our prayers.

However she was one of the lucky ones, as happy as our story ended thousands of others are not the same. Despite the many lives saved through medical advances in organ donation and transplantation, people still die due to the shortage of compatible organs vastly outweighing the number available.

Living in a society where recycling and conserving our environment is so efficiently promoted and prioritized, why is something like organ donation and transplantation, which by recycling conserves our human race, not more widely accepted and equally promoted?

Recycling the organs of the human body allows us to make use of our surrounding resources by transplanting the organs of those who have died, into those who otherwise would die without this intervention. It makes perfectly logical sense for people to donate unneeded organs after death, these organs are not useful to them anymore, why not allow some else to live because them? This makes it possible for a life to be sustained where otherwise life would not remain. The donation of human organs after death gives our society the ability to help save itself.

"What else do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?!" (George Elliot) By becoming an organ donor, one has the capability to give back to the human family, by making their final contribution that of the gift of life.

The donor who gave their heart to save my sister life, gave our family the most precious gift in the world: time. Time to watch her grow up, time to spend with her, to laugh and play and live the life she was meant to live. My heart aches for those who weren't so lucky to get that chance. No one should ever be told to pray for a miracle to save their loved ones life, especially when that which they so desperately need is so abundant in supply and literally being thrown away each day.

April is National Donate Life Month, I urge everyone to sign up to become an organ donor. Talk to your family about your decision and let them know that you want to be able to make an impact on someone's life, even after you are gone. To sign up to become an organ donor, call (866) 937-8824 or visit www.yesutah.org.

Each person on the face of this earth has the ability to give the gift of life. Becoming and organ donor means so much more than just a sticker on a driver's license or a card in a wallet. It means having the power to change someone else's world by being a donor. It's about leaving behind a legacy of giving, giving the ultimate gift of time, and giving the time to live!

Stacey Wardle is a student at Utah Valley State College. She is working toward a degree in the emergency medical field.