Signing Up, Saving Lives

Ron Flick shares his personal story with students stressing the importance of organ donation at Cranberry High School. (By Lauren Rembold, student contributor)
By LAUREN REMBOLD & DYLAN LU
Student contributors

Ron Flick, an organ donor and representative for CORE (Center for Organ Recovery & Education), recently spoke to all the 9th grade health classes and the anatomy class at Cranberry High School about organ donation, what it means, and how it can help people.

“Ron Flick’s presentation about organ donation is beneficial to my classes because Ron was an organ donor himself and because it answers questions some young people may have about organ donation,” said Melanie Oliver, health and physical education teacher.

When you get your driver’s license, they will be asking you if you would like to be an organ donor. It is a frightful question and quite morbid to be frank, but it is a potential gift worth considering.

Every 10 minutes, another person is added to the national transplant waitlist. Even worse, 20 people will die every day on average waiting. Trying to stop this problem is living donor Ron Flick. Currently, there are roughly 118,000 Americans on organ transplant waiting lists and about one-third of them will die due to not receiving the vital organ they need.

“I think we should all consider signing up [for organ donation] because I’ve seen how it can improve people’s lives and even add years onto their lives to be able to do the things they were unable to do without the transplant,” Flick said.

Flick donated his kidney many years ago. Ron’s brother needed a kidney and he made the decision to save his brothers life and give him a kidney, which in Ron’s words, added ten years onto his life. Ron expresses absolutely no regrets in the decision and was glad to have done it.

One person has the potential to save eight lives, and improve the quality of countless other lives, by signing up to be an organ donor. Your sacrifice can heal someone with an otherwise terminal or crippling illness, a gift that will leave someone feeling eternally grateful.

 

Lauren Rembold and Dylan Lu are students at Cranberry High School and members of Cranberry Chronicles, the school’s journalism/publications group.