Organ donation a way for young people to help thousands in need

Would you like to be an organ donor?" reads one line on the document, with corresponding boxes in which to choose "yes" or "no."

Anyone with a driver's license has been faced with this question. Their answer could save a life.

Meadows High School senior Laura Walsh chose to become a potential donor when she received her driver's license at 16.

"If I'm dead, I won't need any organs, and I'm sure there's someone out there who will."

Teens as young as 15 have the option of donating their organs with parental consent when they apply for their learner's permit or driver's license, according to Liliana Arredondo, the public education coordinator at Nevada Donor Network.

If a person chooses to become a donor, the designation is placed on his or her state license or identification card. However, this applies only to donating organs: the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, small intestine and kidneys. Tissues, including corneas, skin, bone, heart valves, connective tissues, tendons, blood and blood vessels, also can be donated when a person registers with the state. The Nevada Donor Network website says that one organ donor can save up to eight lives, and one tissue donor can help more than 50 recipients.

According to Donate Life America, an organization dedicated to educating the public about organ and tissue donation, by the end of 2008, 79.7 million Americans were registered in their state as donors, a 15 percent increase from 2007.

Arredondo says that to donate organs, a donor must be brain dead, which is proven through a series of tests. Brain death is the irreversible cessation of all brain functions, and patients who die of brain death are usually being kept alive using a ventilator.

"Organ and tissue recovery takes place only after brain death has been established," she says.

Patients in need of an organ transplant are listed in a national organ distribution system, Arredondo says, which is handled by the U.S. Network for Organ Sharing and overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The system determines the best match for each donated organ based on a variety of factors such as blood type, medical urgency and location.

On average, 16 people will die each day waiting for a donated organ. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are currently more than 110,000 patients awaiting organs on the national transplant list. More than 800 of these patients are teenagers 11 to 17 years old. Over the past 20 years, 14,836 teens have received donated organs.

Jasmine Calix, 17, is one of these recipients. Born with reflux that affected her kidneys, Calix had two surgeries to correct the problem at the ages of 2 and 7. They were deemed successful until her freshman year in high school, when Calix began experiencing kidney pain. In addition to her kidneys shutting down, Calix also had gallstones, hardened deposits of digestive fluid that develop in the gallbladder.

"I had to drop out of school to have dialysis," Calix says.

After about a year of being stable on medication, Calix received a kidney. She now speaks at schools to inspire people her age to become organ donors.

"It's nice for kids to see that people their own age need organs," she says.