Organ donation from a donor family perspective
April is Organ Donation Awareness month in Canada. I wrote the following article for the Ottawa Gift of Life network as part of their month of organ donation stories. My 63-year-old husband David had a hemorrhagic stroke one morning at home. I did chest compressions, paramedics restarted his heart, but by the time we got to the hospital 70% of his brain was destroyed by a brain bleed. As the doctors put it, “His condition is incompatible with life.” But he had died in my arms, so that was not a shock. Our children and his two closest friends gathered to say goodbye. When I suggested it was time to turn off the machines that were keeping his body alive, two Trillium Gift of Life nurses gently approached me and asked if I would consider giving permission for his organs to be used. David had not registered as a donor. Strangely, although he was a medical ethicist, we had never talked about organ donation. But his goal in the latter part of his life was not for materia...