On Thursday, December 11, Jim Stevens of Hot Springs was wheeled through the third floor of Rapid City Hospital. A large, emotional group packed the hallways in honor of Jim, who had passed away unexpectedly. At the conclusion of the procession, Jim and his friends and family, clad in Green Bay Packers jerseys and apparel, disappeared through a pair of doors to the refrain of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” Beyond those doors, Jim would make a final, selfless gesture: donating his corneas to anonymous patients so that they might see the world as his eyes once did.
The ceremony, called an Honor Walk, is organized by Monument Health and LifeSource on behalf of organ donors, with the permission of their next of kin.
“Each donor has the opportunity to donate organs to save up to eight lives with their liver, kidneys, lungs, intestine, heart and pancreas. They could also restore sight to two people with cornea donations. Anywhere from 75 to 100 individuals could benefit from one donor for tissue and skin,” says Lamont Mason, Donation Liaison at LifeSource. “Someone’s bone could be used for maybe a replacement. But there’s things that are used that a lot of people don’t realize, like surgical screws, where they use bone for the screw. ACL and MCL tears are repaired usually through donor tissue as well.”
LifeSource, based out of Minneapolis, works with hospital coordinators to speak to family members of end-of-life patients to make them aware of and help facilitate the opportunity for tissue donation.
There is, however, a lot of misinformation about organ donation, and Lamont is hoping to help alleviate the concerns that people might have.
“As long as I’ve been in this field, the biggest myth that I have heard is that if you’re an organ donor, hospitals won’t do things to save your life; they’ll just let you die to be an organ donor. And that’s 100% completely false. We hope for life on either end,” says Lamont. “Organ donation is a beautiful solution to terrible circumstances. Doctors and the health care team do everything that they can to save patients, until the family decides that they want to stop the escalation of care.”
What Lamont and LifeSource provide, though, should not be confused with living donors, which is when a living person donates a kidney, for example. Lamont only works with end-of-life patients. The service is federally-regulated and monitored by CMS. Potential donors must meet certain criteria, such as circulatory or brain death before Lamont and LifeSource begin their process.
“Some individuals have signed up to be a donor. They can do that through the national registry or at the DMV on their driver’s license. Those are what we call first-person authorized or FPA. If the individual didn’t sign up to be a donor, we would then ask permission from the family to see if they would like their loved one to be a donor. If they agree, then we fill them in on the process, give them a timeline and then get started with the donation.”
Since Monument Health does not have a dedicated organ donation staff, most patients are flown to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where there is a fully-staffed Donor Care Unit dedicated to the surgical procedures for donations. Some patients forgo that option in favor of staying in Rapid City for their surgery.
For Jim’s Honor Walk, the outpouring of support, love and grief continued during the subsequent flag raising ceremony. The mourners gathered at the flag poles, just outside the Fairmont Street entrance, where RCH Spiritual Care Services Coordinator, Rev. Paul Birnbaum, MDiv, spoke as Lead Security Officer Jason Lofton raised a Donate Life flag to fly alongside the U.S and South Dakota state flags. A prayer was shared, at the end of which a shout came up from the crowd, “Make some noise for Jim! Thank you, Jim!”
Thank you, Jim, and all of the donors who help other patients by their gracious choice to donate.
For more information, visit LifeSource.org.
Story by Kory Lanphear
Photo by Erika Cianca