NEW YORK (WCSB 880) — Thursday marks the fifth annual Organ Donor Enrollment Day in New York.
According to LiveOnNY, every 18 hours a New Yorker dies waiting for a lifesaving transplant and a large reason is because only 35% of residents in the state are registered as organ donors.
As WCBS 880’s Sophia Hall reports, organ donations can change somebody’s life.
She spoke with former 1969 Met Ed Kranepool, who received a kidney from a living donor in May.
“I, myself, was ready for dialysis and I was feeling, you know, kind of weak and wasn’t able to function at full capacity,” he said.
He says he thanks his living donor every day for giving him a second chance at life.
Meanwhile, Dr. Frank Darras, of Stony Brook University Hospital, tells WCBS 880 anyone can sign up to donate their organs when thy die, but being a living donor is a very noble act.
“A vast majority of the donors do not have complications, they get out of the hospital in a timely manner – for example, a majority of the kidney donors go home in 48 hours – and they get back to full activities, normal activities, normal lives and it does not adversely affect their life expectancy,” Darras said.
New York’s Organ Donor Enrollment Day hopes to change people’s opinions about organ donations and encourage people to sign up to become organ and tissue donors, both while they are living and after they are deceased.