MY little brother likes to joke that the doctors are coming to chop me up whenever I open my purse and he sees my donor card, but Ijust laugh, because it’s something I’m dead-set on doing.
IfI were to die in circumstances where my organs were undamaged, then I want to donate every single one of them, including my eyes.
I’m not going to need them, so I want to help someone else, or maybe even more than one person.
I can’t quite understand why someone wouldn’t want to do the same.
Surely saving someone else’s life would be the best possible legacy?
So the revelation that 10 per cent of all adults on the donor register have donations blocked by relatives after their death really angered me.
It is alleged that the percentage of teens who have their donations blocked is even higher, as parents do not allow their children to donate as they had wished.
I appreciate that losing a loved one must be awful, and knowing that they are going to be physically changed before their burial or cremation must be difficult.
However, if that’s what they want,I don’t feel any of us have the right to deny someone their wishes.
Nobody blocks wills when they give money to charity, but doctors are letting families deny the physical donation wishes of a loved one.
IfI knew someone intended to block my organs from being donated,I’d be bitterly disappointed.
I’ve made this decision carefully, so I’d like to think that my parents wouldn’t deny me the right to choose what happens to me.
If hundreds of teenagers in the UK are being denied their wish, then I think that the Government and doctors should consider how much power a family has over organ donation after death.
I’d hope that any doctor would recognise my decision as the true and proper course of action.
In carrying an organ donation card, we are effectively saying: “Whoever I can help,I’d like to help.”
I urge doctors and families to respect that.
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