Organ Transplant Professionals Explain New Website For Virginians

By Cliff Davis

Staff Writer

PETERSBURG - There's a place you can go, in a few seconds time, and get in line to save seven lives. Southside Regional Medical Center is leading the way to it. LifeNet, organ transplant professionals, have created a website, save7lives.org, where Virginians can sign up to become organ donors upon their death.

It supplements the more familiar Department of Motor Vehicles sign-up option.

Members of LifeNet explained the concept to SRMC employees and visitors this week.

But simple statistics couldn't tell the story that Diane Quirley and Herb Albert did.

Once upon a not-very-long time ago, Quirley's son, Shawn, died tragically, unexpectedly, at just 23 years of age. She remembered then a conversation they had and a decision he had made: to become an organ donor.

Shawn survived, she said, in the people whose lives his decision saved.

"Within two weeks of his death, I received a letter from LifeNetwork, about the people that had received benefits from Shawn's donation. I was overwhelmed with joy," Quirley said.

Speaking about organ donation, as she now does regularly, honors Shawn's memory, she said.

Albert knows about organ donation from a different angle: as the recipient. In 1995, silently-spreading hepatitis destroyed his liver and nearly took his life.

"It was something that dropped itself on my doorstep. And I wouldn't be here today if not for the love of people like Diana and Shawn. I am truly blessed. God looked down and saw there was some use left for (me) and he would give me an opportunity," Albert said.

Transplants, he learned, must be given in a narrow window of time - after a person's diagnosis but before they become too sick to survive such a major surgery. That makes it all the more urgent to have donations available.

LifeNet officials on Thursday exploded several organ donation myths: that it eliminates the possibility of an open-casket funeral; that most religions oppose it; or that it could be done in a hotel room to an unsuspecting person.

Three Virginians die every week waiting in vain for an organ donation, according to LifeNet statistics.

One of them could have been Howard King Sr. of Colonial Heights, a pleasant-looking retired local restaurateur.

He and his wife, Augusta King, clipped an article announcing LifeNet's visit to SRMC this week. They listened to the presentation. They were very impressed, they said.

It just happens that, 14 years ago, King received a donated heart.

LifeNet can be contacted at 1-800-847-7839.

Cliff Davis may be reached at 732-3456, ext. 254.

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This article posted November 2, 2003.