April is National Donate Life Month and to honor it, the Life Champion Committee at Medical Center Health System hosted a Donor Memorial Service Friday in the Donor Garden outside the Wheatley Stewart Medical Pavilion.
The service was held to recognize local and employee donors from MCH.
Those donors and recipients, along with their families, shared the emotional stories of their life-saving procedures and were recognized for giving the gift of life.
Care Management Assistant at MCH Mary Helen Lopez recently donated her kidney to her brother Ralph Sanchez last October.
“My brother was on dialysis and I offered this to him when he started dialysis,” Lopez said. “Two years had passed when he had a heart procedure and I offered it to him again and he accepted it.”
Five months later, Sanchez is doing much better.
“It’s a blessing because I’m not stuck in dialysis,” Sanchez said. “I wouldn’t want that for anyone. It keeps you alive but you’re stuck there and can’t go places. Now, I can sleep late and get up whenever I want. I’m retired now. I can go wherever I want, thanks to my beautiful sister.”
Lopez encourages everyone to donate if they can.
“As a donor, it is well worth it,” Lopez said. “I didn’t even consider my scars until after I had the scars. I’m very happy I did it for my brother.”
In 2021, there were eight organ donors at MCH, resulting in 37 organs transplanted as well as 22 tissue donors.
During the event, Performance Improvement Officer at MCH Nicole Hays shared an emotional story of how her daughter who died at the age of 15-months, was still able to help those in need as her right and left kidneys were donated to a 55-year-old wife and mother, as well as her heart to a 15-month-old boy.
“A little girl in her short time on earth ended up making more of a difference than some of us here on earth ever will,” Hays said.
Hays is grateful that her daughter’s organs were able to help other people.”
“Truth is, my daughter could no longer use her heart and kidneys,” Hays said. “Her time on this earth had ended. Keeping them would not change the outcome for her or for me. But for the two people who were still living, they needed them.”
Hays also gave some statistics in her speech.
“Seventeen people die each day waiting for an organ transplant,” Hays said. “That is 119 people a week, 476 people a month or 5,172 people every year. Every donor can save lives and they can enhance over 75 more. Over 40,000 transplants were performed in 2021. Every nine minutes, a person is added to the transplant waiting list. I want to encourage each and every one of you to register to be an organ donor. The process is simple. Go to donatelifetexas.org. The idea is not for us to live forever but maybe to help another live a little bit longer.”
Hairdresser Irma Primeaux had suffered renal disease since she was born. Her condition got worse over the years and it got to a point where she was losing her kidneys.
Her client Jessica Castillo stepped in to help.
“I was going to be put on dialysis and before I got put on dialysis, I was talking about it and I had some clients test and (Castillo) was one of my matches,” Primeaux said.
For Castillo, there was no other option after she learned of her hairdresser’s condition.
“It was just a wonderful experience among both of us,” Castillo said. “When I knew what was going on with her, my heart really sank. She was doing my hair when she told me … God just put it in me that the peace I was given from him was now to give it to her to use and he gave the gift of life. It was all him.”
MCH Chief Nursing Officer Christin Timmons, who is also a kidney donor, talked about how crucial organ donation is for everyone.
“I think it’s something everyone should consider,” Timmons said. “Just because we have tragedies in our lives, doesn’t mean that something good can’t come out of it and I think donation does that for families. It gives them the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones in a physical sense but hello to them in something new and different and something inspiring for other people. I think donation as a whole is important because it is a light at the end of a tragedy.”
The end of the service featured a powder cannon release in honor of those 2021 donors.
