“It’s stressful,” said his wife, Ellie Watkins. Her husband is on the national transplant registry list, and is limited on what he can do. That doesn’t include each dialysis session being four hours and he does it three days a week.
“After I have dialysis I’m wiped out, pretty much for the day,” Bryan Watkins said.
Today, Feb. 14, is National Organ Donor Day, which focuses on five points of life: organs, tissues, marrow, platelets and blood. More than 116,000 men, women and children are on the national transplant waiting list, and nearly 97,700 are waiting for a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Bryan is one of more than 2,200 just in Ohio waiting for a kidney transplant, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
So Bryan is hoping someone is willing to donate a kidney ― and it doesn’t have to be a match.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
If Bryan secures a kidney donor, the network can do what’s called a paired kidney exchange which occurs when a living kidney donor is incompatible with their recipient but does match another person on the waiting list. Two live donor transplants would occur.
Living organ donations, which is the kind Bryan hopes to receive, have been down since before the pandemic. In 2019, nearly 7,400 living donors nationwide gave an organ, but that dropped to just more than 5,700 in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It’s increased to just more than 6,500 living donors in 2021. Last year, 5,970, or 91.3%, of those living organ donations were for a kidney, the most needed type of transplant.
Bryan, with the help of Ellie, had worked to delay the need for dialysis for about two years. But the longer they have to wait, the less time he has.
Bryan’s mortality has hit everyone in their family, even down to the grandchildren. Bryan, who’s known as Buddy, picks up his 8-year-old granddaughter from school, which he and Ellie say is one of the highlights of her day.
“I’m just grateful for the people that are in my life,” Bryan said. “It’s hard. I’ve always wanted to go out and give and stuff, but for me to take and hear compliments, it’s tough for me to do. I’ve always been the giver. It’s hard to accept the kindness people have given me.”
To prepare for a potential donation, Bryan has been working out two days a week at Mahon’s Strength and Fitness in Hamilton. Owner Mimi Mahon is also an organ donor. She donated a kidney to her mom five years ago.
Her new goal is to “spread the word that you can donate a kidney and be just as healthy, and strong, as ever,” she said. “And hopefully I can inspire that next person to give that big gift.”
Working with Bryan, they focus on functional movements, such as getting around, sitting to standing, pulling himself up, and “just building up that functional strength from that day-to-day life is really our focus right now, and building his core strength as well.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Eventually, the former wrestling coach wants to be able to teach his grandson how to wrestle or run with him on the football field.
“There are things I still want to do,” Bryan said. “I used to have a pretty good golf game, but it’s gone to hell the last couple of years.”
Most organ donations are made from deceased donors. Diana Hughes and her daughter Laura Brown had personal experience in deciding if loved ones who died should have their organs donated. The decision was easy as Hughes’ nephew (Brown’s cousin), and Brown’s husband said they would donate their organs.
Hughes is a Mercy Health-Fairfield Hospital nurse manager for two of its ICUs, and the hospital representative for LifeCenter.
“I just think it’s important to give back,” she said. “You can give the gift of sight, as well as life. You can help somebody with a kidney transplant that doesn’t have to go to dialysis anymore and get their life back.”
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have also been a number of lung transplants due to pulmonary fibrosis, “and those people can be off oxygen and live a happy and healthy life.”
One full-body organ donation from a deceased donor can save eight lives as two kidneys, two lungs, the heart, and the pancreas can be donated, and the liver can be split so that two people receive the gift. But a deceased donor can give eyes, intestines, and tissues to help countless more people.
Brown, an ICU nurse at Mercy Health-Fairfield, said her husband, Mike, attempted suicide in 2014. With the help of her then-14-year-old daughter Kelsey, they got his heart beating but his brain injury was too severe, and was declared brain dead.
Brown and her husband happened to have the discussion years prior, and the organ donation decision was made then. For her three daughters, the donation made their dad a hero because “he was going to be able to save multiple lives.”
Hughes said being an organ donor leaves a legacy.
“You’ve helped somebody in a tragic situation,” she said. “You can’t bring them back, but they can go on and help somebody else. And you feel like they’ve done something good in their life in giving back.”
ORGAN DONATION FACTS & FIGURES
One deceased organ donor can save up to eight lives as a person can give both kidneys and both lungs, as well as their heart and pancreas, and the liver can be split to save two people.
In the past five years, there were 191,409 living and deceased donors nationwide, and 1,240 were in Ohio. Over the same time frame, 111,903 living and deceased donors gave kidneys, and 1,139 were in Ohio.
TRANSPLANTS IN 2021
Here is a breakdown of transplants nationwide in 2021:
Kidney: 24,669 (5,970 from a living donor)
Liver: 9,236 (569 from a living donor)
Heart: 3,817
Lung: 2,524
Pancreas: 143
Source: Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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