For a fifth year, families gathered with Community Healthcare System staff members, Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network representatives and Indiana Lions Eye Bank officials to honor the area’s organ, eye and tissue donors.
The annual Donate Life Rose Dedication Ceremony was held Nov. 4 at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts to formally send-off roses that will make up the Donate Life float in the 2016 Rose Parade. Each of the 33 roses sponsored by Community Hospital in Munster, St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart now carry tags with messages on their vials of love from the donor families.
“Each of you has a story to tell and this is a safe place to tell it,” said Jana Lacera, rose ceremony coordinator and director of Bioethics, Community Hospital. “Everyone here understands what you are going through after losing a loved one. These dedicated roses and the tributes they carry add special meaning not only for the families of our organ and tissue donors, but serve to inspire others to become organ, eye and tissue donors as well. Supporting the Donate Life float is just one of the ways the hospitals of Community Healthcare System honor and remembers donors and their generous contributions.”
Year round, the hospitals of Community Healthcare System partner with Donate Life America to raise awareness regarding eye, organ and tissue donations. The Donate Life rose ceremony is another opportunity for the Community Healthcare System hospitals to connect with donor families again and thank them for their kindness and courage. Transplant recipients also in attendance relate to the families the impact the donor’s gift has had on their lives.
Megan Jorsch, a liver and kidney transplant recipient from Crown Point, told those in attendance that there hasn’t been a day that has gone by since her transplants that she hasn’t thought of her donor for all the things she is now able to do. Megan was born with hyperoxaluria, a rare condition that leads to excessive kidney stones and eventually kidney failure.
“On August 16, I got a liver and a kidney so that I could have a life without pain, a life without surgeries…a life I can enjoy,” she said. “I want my angel LaRon to be proud of me.”
The Swart family (Kelly, husband Jeff, Jeff Jr and Vance) of Cedar Lake came once again to the Rose Ceremony to honor daughter Ashley Ann who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm at age 20 in 2013. She had signed up to be an organ donor and the family honored her wishes.
Ashley’s mother Kelly Swart said that through organ donation, the “hope lost from one family is hope passed on to another.”
Vicki Olds of Crown Point said that she became an organ donor because she wanted to be able to help someone else, so she registered her intention on her driver’s license. Her daughter Nikki asked her about her choice and decided to be a donor too. Not long after, Nikki died from an accidental drowning.
“My sweet daughter was able to save five lives,” explains Olds. “She was a 100 percent match – that’s one in one million match - to my best friend’s daughter Tanisha Basham (University Park, IL). Please have that conversation and ask your partners, ask your children, ‘would you want us to save someone else?’ Make the worst day of your life a better day in a small way. You’ll have peace of mind.”
With a theme called “Treasure Life’s Journey,” the 2016 Donate Life Rose Parade float will carry donor families, living donors and transplant recipients as part of the Rose Bowl events Friday, January 1 in Pasadena, Calif. The float features a colorful caravan with 60 donor medal-inspired floragraphs that honor the invaluable treasure of the gift of life. Twenty-four float riders continue to share in life’s adventures through the gift of organ donation. Sixteen living donors will walk beside the float carrying provisions of fruit accented with flowers, symbolizing the life-sustaining gifts that have been given. And, the dedicated roses placed by the families create the floral jewels that ornament the base of the float.
One person can save up to eight lives through the donation of lifesaving organs – heart, kidney, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine – and help more than 50 people or more who need corneas to see, skin to heal from burns and bones and connective tissue for common knee, back and dental surgeries. Some 6,000 lives per year also are saved by living kidney and liver donors.
Organ and tissue donations save and heal hundreds of thousands of adults and children each year in the U.S. alone. Indiana residents can register their intent to be organ and tissue donors while obtaining or renewing their drivers’ license. Registration also is accepted at donatelifeindiana.org.