Should You Know the Names of Organ Donors?

Organ donation is where a deceased person or their family has offered to give away their organs after their death so that it can be transplanted into someone else's body so that they may live a more fulfilling life. Most of the time you are not aware of the name of the person that donated the organ to you, the hospital usually only tells you roughly about where the donor organ came from. But sometimes you can find out who donated the organ with a little research, or you could find out the name of the recipient of the organ.

When my sister was killed by a drunk driver, when she was a teenager, we donated her organs. This was in the early 80's and they didn't give out information on who got the organs and who donated the organs, we still found out who got her heart. It was a friend of the family who was a nurse at the hospital who told my parents about the recipient for the heart. She gave us background information. He was a young father with 3 small children and had a birth defect. Without a new heart he didn't have long to live. This was comforting to my parents because this senseless death did have some good from it. Someone who may not live long enough to see their children graduate would be able to live long enough to share in their children's life. Unfortunately for my parents they also knew the name. I do not know if the new owner of the heart knew our names but he could have easily found out. It was a terrible accident that my sister was in, 2 people died and it was all over the news. But if he did know, he never tried to contact our family.

After a few years my parents were finally getting on with their life as well as any parent could after losing a child. They never did live a full life after the death of my sister. But as years went on, it got easier for them. Then reading the obituaries one day, they read that the donor of the heart died. He was still at a young age, but because he had my sister's heart, it opened the wounds all over again. It was like my sister died twice. It was heart breaking to watch my parents relive this ordeal again. Now they faced reality that she was no longer alive at all. While the donor was alive they felt that she was still able to live a life or at least a part of her was alive experiencing things while he was alive.

I feel that if they didn't know the name of the donor, which they would have never had to relive the emotions of her death when he passed on. They could of went on like her heart was healthy, and the donor was leading a normal life because of her. For my family, knowing the name of the donor turned out to be more painful for us then if we didn't know. I think that donor's names should be kept secret, with details given out to comfort the family but personal details should be kept sealed. This makes it easier for everyone involved.