Honestly, looking at this bug, they really should have hit the Emergency Room first... but let's be real, our ERs are mostly just a joke when it comes to actual expertise. Most of the doctors working there look like they barely graduated med school yesterday, just spinning their wheels until they stumble onto something specialized. It’s such a weird paradox because, logically, you’d think an ER would be staffed by seasoned pros who actually know how to triage and pull the right moves at the right time. Maybe some future specialization within the ER will fix things, but we're talking way down the road for that. Right now, we're stuck with these morbid scenarios where doctors who aren't even remotely competent are working in such high-stakes environments, and honestly, the best thing for the patient is for them to get rushed straight to a hospital immediately—even if the cause seems totally banal and easily fixable. I know, it’s definitely not the most efficient way to run a healthcare system, but that's just how it is.... It gets even more tragic when you deal with genuine emergencies. Since I work in an institution that handles cases coming in from five or six different ERs, I can say with total confidence that doctors and medical techs alike could easily end up facing serious prison time for their mistakes. We all get that collective chill down our spines whenever a call comes in saying a specific ambulance is bringing in a critical case, because you just never know what kind of chaos you're about to walk into. The way some ER crews operate is basically like some low-rent thugs with Tamić—just grab the guy, toss him inside, and dump him at the hospital—who cares if he can breathe or needs oxygen? Or heaven forbid, actually needs an IV line? Screw it, they'll just shove him through a window, throw on some dark shades, and call it a day. My apologies in advance to the ER staff out there doing everything by the book, but I truly believe that those people are just a tiny bit of wheat in a massive sea of chaff.
Scott Allen10 said:I mean, what’s the actual connection between hemorrhagic shock and getting bitten by some random bug? Or did I just totally lose the plot while reading this thread?
(honestly, I'm kind of obsessed with how they phrase that)
I actually heard someone call it a blood-flow collapse...😬 ...just another one of those ridiculous, fake "patriotic" exaggerations you see floating around.
Rachel Brooks63 said:Wait, what even is hemorrhagic shock?
Basically, it's just when you go into shock because of massive blood loss, whether it's visible or happening somewhere inside the body... honestly though, shock is a terrifying thing no matter how it happens.
There's honestly more and more debate lately regarding Hashimoto's... But since we're dealing with an autoimmune condition, you really have to consider—both with today's testing and whatever comes down the line—that having Hashimoto's just bumps up the risk of running into other autoimmune issues way more than if you didn't have it at all.
Jack Harris3 said:From what I gather, it’s actually the opposite. If you sign up, you're essentially opting in and you get a donor card to carry around with you... But if you haven't signed anything, your family can basically decide whether or not they want your organs to be used. Otherwise, they aren't allowed to take them. If they take them anyway and the family doesn't find out—like if you pass away in a hospital, for instance—well, I wouldn't know about that. 😁
Actually, no. Most countries in the EU follow an "opt-out" system where the family's permission isn't legally required...
That includes...
Sweden USA USA Austria Belgium Spain Belgium Spain Italy Canada Italy Canada Canada Finland France Finland France Luxembourg Norway Luxembourg Norway Greece Portugal Greece Portugal
...but even then, regardless of what the law says, the custom is usually to check with the family first.
The countries where the family *has* to give consent are: Germany Ireland Denmark Vel Great Britain Netherlands situation
As for how things work in the US or Australia, I think it's more of a personal choice where you have to explicitly state your wishes, and that's really all that matters. But I'm not an expert on the specifics there, so I won't go speculating too much.
And just like that, after a total grind of a day where we all really put in the work and left it all on the field, we’re finally winding down into a quiet night...
So, let me just lay out how everything stands right now... Basically, brain death was officially confirmed after a full legal medical review, so that part is set in stone. They’ve formally declared the passing, and we finally got the green light on the transplant authorization—which is huge because nothing moves an inch without that paperwork. All the right authorities have been looped in to coordinate the next steps, and they’ve already run those massive rounds of testing to make sure the organs are actually viable and, more importantly, safe for whoever ends up receiving them. Now, we’re really just sitting tight and waiting for the surgical teams to arrive on the scene.
The patient is looking a bit more stable now, though we're having to push higher doses of dopamine and norepinephrine through the infusion pumps via the central line just to keep their blood pressure within a safe range. We also had to stay on top of the diabetes insipidus—which happens quite a bit in cases like this where you're dealing with massive urine output—but we’ve got that under control by hitting them with regular doses of vasopressin and keeping the IV fluids running heavy.
Kinda off-topic, I know, but I was thinking about how intense ICU care can be. You see people who are basically gone, just hanging on by a thread on a ventilator, hooked up to IV drips and all those heavy-duty meds to keep their blood pressure from bottoming out, and it’s wild how the body holds on. Even when things look terminal, you can have someone showing some semblance of heart, kidney, or liver function for five or six days before everything finally just shuts down for good.
After dinner—which was basically just us rotating through different spots only to end up staring at some mediocre, mushy mess on our plates—we headed back to the shock room. Our hospital coordinator started acting like some high-stakes military strategist, laying out the game plan for us. "Alright, listen up," he says, "those guys from the city said they’d roll in during their usual vampire hours, probably around 2:00 AM. So, nothing's happening before 3:00. We can tell the urologists and ophthalmologists to hang out here for a couple of hours while we wait for those other folks to finally wake up and get their act together."
Man, I just looked up and realized it’s almost 2 in the morning... honestly, the donor is holding steady for now, especially with those meds we talked about earlier keeping things under control.
"How’s it going?!" Dr. Hercules burst into the room looking absolutely stunned. "Don't tell me we're actually the first ones here?" Honestly, we were, and even the urologists and ophthalmologists hadn't even made an appearance yet. Dr. Hercules just laughed it off, joking that they must have somehow managed to snag a private jet out of nowhere to be running this late. We all ended up huddled together in the breakroom—just Herc, one of the junior docs, two scrub techs, and this massive perfusionist who stands at least 6'5"—just nursing some coffee that was steaming hot on the burner. Someone mentioned that they'd already checked in the recipient and got him prepped, so the poor guy is probably sitting in his room feeling pretty anxious while the professor and the transplant team are already geared up and ready to head into the OR.
The waiting room is absolutely packed today because the urologists showed up in full force—we're talking four or five doctors along with an equal number of surgical techs—and honestly, you could see the pure misery in their eyes. It was pretty obvious they’d all been ordered by the Chief to show up and pull duty instead of just staying home, but hey, what can you do when the boss gives an order like that?
So, you’ve got this ophthalmologist showing up with just one surgical assistant by his side, acting all humble about it... He actually had the nerve to say, "Oh, she's my favorite," which is just hilarious. But honestly, we all heard the gossip floating around the halls at Mayo Clinic anyway, so he wasn't exactly keeping any secrets.
So, we all sat there together and did one final, grueling sweep through that mountain of paperwork we’d been sweating over day and night—everything from the initial findings and deep-dive searches to the heavy stuff, like the brain death certification and the formal authorization for organ procurement.
Alright, we're rolling, the OR is all set up and ready to go... first the urologists will get in there, then the ophthalmologists, followed by the cardiac surgeons... we’re basically packing everything up one last time for the final haul straight to the surgical suite... once we arrive, the patient gets moved onto the table and hooked up to the anesthesia machine along with all the monitors.
Urologists tend to move at a bit of a slower pace during these procedures, mostly because they’re constantly pausing to walk you through what’s happening, clarifying details, and making sure you're actually following the important stuff... but once they finally wrap up all that explaining, they get down to business, handle the hemostasis, and close everything up.
The second the ophthalmologist walked through the door, he just went straight to work, diving right into those eyeballs and pulling both corneas out in no time at all.
The cardiac surgery crew always seems to be the last ones on the scene, but man, they move at lightning speed. They’ll fly through a sternotomy, open up the pericardium, prep all those major veins and arteries, clamp everything down, and then flush the heart with cardioplegia solution just to bring it to a standstill. Before you know it, they’ve cut the vessels, harvested the organ, packed it in some Wisconsin or Eurocolin solution, tucked it into the transport media with the rest of the organs, and closed up the chest—all in about thirty minutes flat. It's honestly wild to watch.
And that’s pretty much it.
You hear those ventilators, monitors, and perfusion pumps finally powering down, and once all the paperwork for the coroner and transport is squared away, the body is moved over to that Department.
After grabbing one last quick coffee together, the teams head out to get back to business, because organs—especially hearts—are on a strict deadline to reach the recipient. For instance, you’ve only got about a four or five-hour window to get a heart transplanted. They call in to confirm the organs have been harvested and they're en route, just so the surgical teams on the other end know everything is greenlit to start the transplant.
So, the whole organ donation process kicks off once the spouse signs off on the explant authorization, but only after the brain scintigraphy confirms there's absolutely no blood flow left. Once that’s set, you've got the attending anesthesiologist and the neurosurgeon sign the official "Brain Death Certificate." It’s pretty heavy stuff, but basically, the exact hour and minute those two specialists sign that form becomes the official time of death—that’s the timestamp that goes straight into the registry and onto the death certificate.
So, right now we’re looking at a situation where brain death has been legally and fully confirmed, but since the heart is still beating and the blood pressure, breathing, kidney function, and metabolic balance are all being held steady by the ventilator and those vasoactive drugs, it's a pretty heavy thing to process.
So, the hospital coordinator just gave the final green light to the national coordinator over in New York City, confirming we’ve got an organ donor and the family has officially signed off on the transplant.
The way things work around here usually breaks down into two main paths.
First off, once you stop treating whatever caused the death—usually stuff like trauma or brain bleeds—everything shifts toward keeping those vitals steady. You're basically aiming to keep blood pressure at least at 100 mmHg and keeping that central venous pressure under 5 or 6 mmHg, while making sure they're hitting an hourly urine output of at least 50 ml/h. To pull that off, we focus on optimal fluid replacement, mostly by running saline, Ringer's lactate, or 5% glucose through an IV. I remember seeing this quite a bit during my training; if the donor starts putting out too much urine, they can lose a ton of potassium really fast, so we'll often toss some potassium chloride into the infusion just to stay ahead of it and keep things balanced.
And honestly, that’s where things get really complicated, because they have to go through this whole intense diagnostic process to check the donor's overall health just like they would for any specific organ.
So, here comes this... uh... let’s just call it the "Famous Paper" because I can't wrap my head around the actual technical name right now. It’s basically this massive document filled with all these grids and little boxes where you log every single data point, and everything is written in English too. It’s essentially an international protocol used by every transplant center out there to make sure all the findings are documented perfectly clearly, especially if a specialized team from out of town shows up to collect an organ. See, sometimes for one reason or another, we might not be able to use an organ locally, so through UNOS, those details get shared with nearby transplant centers whose teams then fly in to pick them up. Of course, there's always that nagging possibility that nothing can be used at all... and then... well, it's all just for nothing.
I’m just gonna drop all my lab results and target organ metrics right here as I get them, so I don't have to go back and recap everything later on.
So, we’re back at it again with the blood draws for all those deep-dive lab tests—everything from CBC and electrolytes like potassium and sodium to kidney markers like urea and creatinine, plus liver stuff like AST, ALT, and GGT, and even things like amylase, troponin, and lactate levels... It feels like we're constantly repeating these tests throughout the whole process, but honestly, if we need results fast, the lab techs at the hospital are absolute lifesavers and always go the extra mile to help us out.
They also grab a blood sample for the Blood Bank to run all those serology tests—you know, checking for things like hepatitis, HIV, and syphilis—plus they double-check the blood type and Rh factor, though we've actually already got that part sorted out. When it comes to organ transplants, the folks over at the Blood Bank really step up and make sure these samples get absolute priority.
We’re pulling the whole kit and caboodle for microbiology—everything from peripheral blood draws and samples from the central line to urine and tracheal aspirates—and then we just bundle it all up to send over to the lab at Mayo Clinic.
They call it a biopsy because they have to grab some lymph node samples from the donor to handle the "crossmatching"—basically checking if the donor's tissue actually matches the recipient's at the National Marrow Donor Program. So, you’ve got this surgeon showing up with two assistants and a scalpel, heading straight for the groin area to cut through the skin and subcutaneous tissue to hunt down those femoral lymph nodes. The real kicker, though, was that Dr. Miller showed up—he's this notorious klutz who is so incredibly clumsy that a job that should take maybe fifteen or twenty minutes drags on for nearly an hour. We were all sitting there just praying to God that he’d prep everything right and wouldn't accidentally nick the femoral vein, let alone the femoral artery, because that would be an absolute disaster. But hey, I guess luck was on our side for once; he managed to snag a few nodes, tossed them in a container, and handed them over to us.
They also grab another four or five test tubes—each one a different color, mind you—to pull more blood, and then they ship the whole lot off to a lab in New York City for all those extra tests that ensure everything is totally safe for the recipient.
It’s honestly hilarious when you think about it—someone just hops in a car, grabs these samples, and heads straight for the station, whether it’s a bus or a train, doesn't even matter. Depending on which one leaves first for New York City, we’re basically handing off this precious package of blood and lymph nodes to some totally bewildered driver or conductor, telling them, "Hey, a federal agent is waiting in NYC to pick this up." It sounds insane because it is. The poor guy usually just avoids eye contact, probably thinking we're pulling some kind of prank on him... hehehe....
So anyway... back to the donor... we call in a radiologist to run an ultrasound on the organs. He shows up, starts poking around the target organs, measuring the liver, spleen, pancreas, and kidneys... mumbling under his breath, acting all grumpy, and finally mutters that the liver and spleen look enlarged. He says the kidneys seem fine, but he’d feel better if the urologists took a look since they’re the "real experts." So, we call them in, and the whole ritual repeats itself... they come over, take all the measurements again, check the urea and creatinine levels, watch the urine output... and then they say, "Yeah, kidneys are good!" And everyone’s all happy because they get to participate in the transplant process to "learn something," as they put it....
When it comes to a heart ultrasound, the radiologist claims he isn't qualified, saying, "Look, let the cardiologist handle it, that's their bread and butter." We call the cardiologist, and he’s like, "Sure, no problem, but I can't come to you because I can't do a heart ultrasound with your machine; I need my own equipment, and it's too massive to move." ...Crap! Now what? We end up packing up the donor and hauling everything over to Cardiology. We're talking portable ventilators, portable monitors, three infusion pumps, a backup oxygen tank, and a crew of 4 or 5 anesthesiology staff tagging along... it's a whole production. You see people in the hallways crossing themselves and praying as we pass by... man, what a mess. We finally roll up and we're first in line... the cardiologist does the ultrasound, measures the heart dimensions and chambers, checks the wall thickness, stroke volume, cardiac output, ejection fraction, and all those other vital stats needed for the surgeons. He finally says, "Alright, we're done." So, we drag this entire circus back to the ICU, where we barely made it because we almost ran out of oxygen in our tanks.
In the meantime, the hospital coordinator called in an ophthalmologist to check the corneas and give an opinion. He pulls out his gadgets, looks things over... and once he's finished, he tells us nothing looks special and the corneas are fine, which is exactly what he writes down on the Official Paperwork.
Once the coordinator wraps up all the findings and fills out the Official Paperwork, they fax this whole disorganized mountain of documents to the national coordinator. From there, it’s all reviewed by folks at the major transplant centers who sift through the data, analyze everything, and pull from the database to find not just the first available match, but the absolute best candidate. Once someone is picked, the "chase" begins to get them admitted to the transplant center as fast as possible. Around here, that means places like Mayo Clinic or big metropolitan hospitals depending on what organs we're talking about.
Hours tick by, and the donor is pretty much stable with steady blood pressure, a good pulse, and decent urine output—though we have to tweak things occasionally with vasopressin from the doctors, and we have to suction the airway a few times (to put it bluntly, we're cleaning out the gunk).
Finally, the coordinator walks in and tells us the news: they called, and the liver and pancreas are a no-go because they're enlarged, and the enzyme levels are hitting the upper limits, meaning the liver tissue isn't ideal for a transplant. The kidneys are fine, but the genius cardiothoracic surgeons are insisting on a coronary angiogram... mrrrr..... Motherf***ing hell!... grrrrr... mrrrrr. ...Nothing left to do but start all over again and play the idiots for a second time, dragging a dead man and a mountain of gear back to Cardiology.
Luckily, the guy on call knows his way around invasive cardiology. He deftly works the catheter on the coronary artery, and we manage to get it done relatively quickly before heading back to the ICU. We email the CD of the angiogram images to those genius cardiothoracic surgeons... They tell us pretty quickly that "everything looks good" and that they'll all arrive together once they pack up, usually around 2 or 3 in the morning, and they casually remind us to have five liters of coffee ready for them....
I'm gonna copy-paste something I wrote on another forum a while back when I was explaining the whole process in more detail to some guy...
Listen, nobody—and I mean absolutely nobody—is ever harvested for organs without brain death being indisputably confirmed first, and that only happens to patients being treated in intensive care units. Let me give you a recent example just so I can paint a picture of how this actually works on the ground...
The patient, let's call him Mr. X, had suffered a massive brain bleed. He had surgery and was moved to the ICU afterward. He was comatose, hemodynamically unstable with high blood pressure that was incredibly tough to manage, and high intracranial pressure. We were hitting him hard with meds to bring down the brain swelling, several types of heavy-duty antihypertensives, and prophylactic doses of antibiotics along with all the necessary fluid and blood replacements. By the third or fourth day, his blood pressure started dropping below the target range, so we had to step up the vasopressors to keep him stable. A brain CT showed massive swelling that just kept progressing despite the surgery and all the medication we were pumping into him. On the fourth day, the patient starts producing a lot of urine and he doesn't react at all to any painful stimuli. Those are some of those clinical red flags that suggest brain death might have occurred. By day five, nothing has changed; he’s still in critical condition and still on all the prescribed meds. The anesthesiologists on duty decide to run a few clinical tests which, if they come back negative, make it almost certain the brain is gone. First, there's the atropine test. We administer atropine intravenously, and in a healthy brain, it always triggers a significant spike in heart rate. In this case, nothing happened. Then comes the corneal test. We take a tiny cotton swab and lightly touch the patient's sclera. A normal, living brain will trigger an automatic blink reflex. Here? Nothing. We can run a few more tests to check for other brainstem reflexes, too. Next is the really crucial one: the apnea test. Since this kind of patient is always on a ventilator, we follow a very strict protocol where we briefly disconnect them from the machine a few times to monitor their attempts at spontaneous breathing, their CO2 levels, and a few other parameters. If the brain is working, the buildup of CO2 in the blood will force the body to try and take a breath. Here, there was zero response. Brain death is pretty much a certainty at this point. While those tests are happening, we’re also evaluating whether the patient is even a candidate for donation—checking that the head injury/illness is isolated, making sure there aren't any malignancies or other chronic or acute issues that would be a contraindication, and so on... Toward the end of the day, we decide to perform a brain scan (scintigraphy) to definitively confirm if the brain is dead. With a crew of 4 or 5 people from the anesthesia team, the patient is moved to the nuclear medicine department for the scan. We use a portable ventilator, a portable monitor to track heart rate and blood pressure, and continuous IV infusions via pumps to maintain stability. We inject a radioactive isotope—usually Technetium—into the vein and use a gamma camera to track how that isotope moves through the bloodstream. If the precise images show no trace of the isotope in the head area, it means there is no blood circulation in the brain and the patient is brain dead. After the imaging, the nuclear med specialist says there's basically no circulation in the brain, though they aren't 100% sure about one specific segment because the image quality isn't perfect. Well, whatever, let's get back to it. On the sixth day, we do another brain scan, and this time it shows a crystal-clear picture of zero cerebral circulation, and we get the signed paperwork stating everything unequivocally. We head back to the shock room and call in the neurosurgeon or neurologist on call. They review the scan report and look closely at the actual images themselves. They also perform a mandatory neurological exam on the patient to confirm once and for all that the brain is completely dead. First, we grab the paperwork—it’s called the Brain Death Certificate. We fill out all the patient's details and check off which specific medical method was used to confirm brain death. An anesthesiologist and a consulted neurosurgeon or neurologist both have to sign off on it, along with their official stamps. We look at the wall clock, and whatever time those two specialists sign that paper becomes the legal time of death. At that point, the patient is officially dead, even if their heart is still beating, their blood pressure is steady, they're producing urine, and the ventilator is doing all the breathing work for the body. There is absolutely zero chance of anyone "waking up from a coma" because once the brain is gone, the person is gone (I think the late Pope said something similar once, too). ONLY THEN do we approach the family to ask for their consent regarding the organ procurement process. We call the family in, and in what is an incredibly heavy, gut-wrenching situation, we break the news of the death that has already been medically confirmed. We explain how we reached that conclusion and then gently ask for their written permission to proceed with organ donation. In such a tense, heartbreaking atmosphere—honestly, I don't know how people find the strength to even speak—the spouse signs their consent right there on that Brain Death Certificate. IF CONSENT ISN'T GRANTED, everything stops immediately, period. There's no point in pushing further. Since the patient is legally and physically deceased, they are taken off the ventilator, even if the heart hasn't stopped yet. But if they do give the okay, then the whole process can move forward... ......
So, that's basically how it plays out before we get the green light....which means it's fundamentally impossible to just "write someone off" to harvest their organs; there aren't any shady deaths happening like that. If you're curious, I can try to write up what happens next when I have a free moment, so we can clear up some of this nonsense that's been floating around the internet...
Ronald Lopez3 said:Scott Allen10, I was wondering about what happens if someone hasn't officially signed up to be an organ donor and then the moment comes where they have to ask who actually holds the final say
is it the mother of the potential donor or the spouse????
Who is the one person who gets to make that call? I'm asking because this has been weighing on my mind for quite a while now. I’ve already laid out my own stance to everyone in my family—my mom, my sister, and my husband. But I'm really stuck on how things would go down with my husband specifically. Honestly, I think my mother-in-law would absolutely lose her mind if anyone even brought it up, and I'm pretty sure she'd just say NO. She's one of those people who doesn't know much about any of this and just shuts down. It's such a heavy issue, especially since people avoid talking about it like the plague because they get all these scary ideas from movies, which honestly creeps me out. If I have my donor card ready, I want to be able to help someone out, just like I hope someone will do for me if I ever end up in that position.
So, is it the mother or the wife????😕 😕 😕
Well, he laid out the hierarchy of importance in his last post...
Jose Miller3 said:Look, tell me this, Scott Allen10:
I’ve had my donor card for ages, but the emergency contact on there passed away a while back. So, who actually makes the call if I go? You mentioned that family wishes are always respected, but my family is basically non-existent. My closest relative is my brother ( 😘 if he's around here) and we haven't spoken or even seen each other in 🤔 like 10 years, so there's no way he should be deciding my stance on organ donation when he doesn't even know what I believe. Can I just put this URL on my card so someone can actually see THAT I WANT THEM TO TAKE EVERY SINGLE LAST ORGAN I HAVE??
Hmm... funny you mention that, because I was actually chatting about something pretty similar with my coordinator at the Mayo Clinic just the other day... He told me something along the lines of, "if someone really has no close family left but holds a valid donor card in their own name, they would definitely move forward with the organ retrieval process." There's more to the explanation, too... first off, like we talked about, there's legal protection for that. And second, consent for retrieval follows a specific hierarchy of priority starting with a spouse, children, parents, siblings, or a legal guardian (if one exists ) and then "any other person legally authorized to manage the deceased's remains." So, they aren't listing distant cousins or random relatives, which means unless they have some kind of legal authorization ( 😕 !!...), they shouldn't have any say in the decision regarding retrieval. I don't think some random URLs would make much sense in your situation since nobody is going to be scrolling through links given how delicate these decisions are—you know, to prevent any tampering. But honestly, I think your situation is pretty straightforward, and there shouldn't be any reason, God forbid, for your wishes not to be honored.
jaja said:Based on this, someone could be perfectly healthy and still be dead.😈
Joe. See, those contraindications you're pointing out really only apply to patients dealing with traumatic brain injuries, brain bleeds, or hypoxic brain damage—basically people in comas who are hooked up to ventilators in the ICU at a place like the Mayo Clinic. (I think I mentioned that somewhere else earlier, too).
What a massive pile of nonsense.... Here, take this... 😵 ...maybe it'll help clear your head a bit....
Posts like this only come from people who live for conspiracy theories and clearly haven't done a lick of actual research on the subject. It honestly takes me back to this debate I had with a few self-proclaimed "experts" on another forum about this exact same thing. I'm throwing out the same questions now that I couldn't get an answer to back then, because I suspect we're dealing with the same crowd:
Criminal activity or shady dealings regarding medical extractions here in the States... WHERE EXACTLY? WHEN? WHO? WHICH HOSPITAL?
Once you can actually provide some real answers to those questions, then we can talk, but until then.... 🙂 ....you might want to take your little manifestos somewhere else....
Lisa Ortiz17 said:Scott Allen10, I was just sitting here wondering about that weird scenario where someone signs an organ donor card, gets into a bad car wreck, and then it turns out they actually had cancer all along without even knowing it—what happens to their organs then?
You know, there actually isn't such a thing as an "organ donation contract" here in the States; what we really have is just an organ donor declaration. I honestly can't even begin to wrap my head around how much of a mess things have become lately, but I guess that's just life in America, isn't it? It feels like everything is just drifting away from us without anyone even noticing, almost like we're all just watching things slip through our fingers while we go about our daily routines. When it comes to organ donation after someone passes, it really all comes down to what the family decides in the end. To answer what you were asking, we always run a super thorough diagnostic check on any donor, because honestly, you can't afford to miss anything when it comes to this stuff. Beyond just sitting down with the family to get their full medical history, we’re running a whole battery of lab tests, blood work, chest X-rays, and ultrasound scans on the abdomen and chest to confirm brain death. If even one little thing looks slightly off or suspicious, we have to step back and rule out every other possibility before moving forward—it's just how we ensure everything is done by the book. But honestly, you have to keep in mind that those tiny little microtumors or micrometastases can totally slip under the radar, so everything described above is definitely a possibility. Honestly, stuff like that is super rare and just falls into that whole "shit happens" category of life.
So, basically, what was mentioned above only applies to patients hanging out in the ICU, specifically those who: - have suffered an isolated traumatic brain injury, or - are dealing with intracranial bleeding, or - have sustained hypoxic brain damage.
...it’s really only those specific types of patients (given those diagnoses and assuming there aren't any contraindications) who would even be considered potential organ donors.
Contraindications: - Kids under 5 or anyone over 65. - Any kind of malignant disease, though I don't think anyone deals with primary brain tumors—if they did, they’d be heading straight for surgery anyway. - Hepatitis B or C, HIV, and syphilis. - Chronic low blood pressure that just won't budge even with vasoactive meds. - Any medical history showing previous organ damage. - Sepsis or any confirmed infection in the organ systems. - Low urine output or total kidney shutdown despite being on diuretics. - Abnormal lab results for urea, creatinine, or liver enzymes.
Grace Jackson11 said:I don't get it! Nobody is going to offer an alcoholic's kidney because it isn't a healthy organ.
...🙂 ....oh, they absolutely will, provided the lab results and ultrasound scans don't show any signs of pathology. Honestly, contraindications for organ transplants are becoming rarer by the day—there are really just a handful left. Even the age limit has been creeping up over the last few years; I remember we actually performed a kidney transplant on a 61-year-old not too long ago.