Registry to ease organ donation

COLUMBIA — More than 1.2 million South Carolina drivers can point to the symbol of a heart on their driver's licenses as evidence that they want to be organ donors. Many probably don't know the image means little when they die.

That red heart with the letter "Y," on South Carolina licenses since 1980, carries no legal weight and doesn't inform relatives or medical personnel of someone's intentions to donate organs.

That disconnect will change dramatically Wednesday when a new state registry that links donors to people who need transplants becomes accessible on the Internet.

South Carolina is among the last state nationwide to create such a registry of organ and tissue donors, which is run by the nonprofit organization Donate Life. All 50 now either have a registry or have one in the works, though not all are useful.

For example, some don't allow an organ recovery service to access it. And 14 states lack an online registry, said Aisha Huertas, spokeswoman for Donate Life America.

Statewide as of July, 33.5 percent of South Carolina drivers carried a heart symbol in their wallets, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

While the agency collected numbers, it did not gather names or any information to be shared. The decision on whether to donate rested entirely with the next of kin.

"Unless the driver's license was around when someone died, it did no good," said Mark Johnson, spokesman for LifePoint Inc., the organ recovery service designated by the federal government for South Carolina. "Now there is a legal record of your wishes."

Residents who want to be donors must go online or sign up for the Donate Life registry at Department of Motor Vehicle offices, an option they've had since late last month.

Donors will have to check the "yes" box each time they renew their license, and they'll see a new symbol on their licenses: a red heart surrounded by a broken circle with 11 notches, denoting that every 11 minutes someone in the U.S. is added to a transplant waiting list.

As of Jan. 2 more than 775 South Carolina residents were on waiting lists for organ transplants.

Mark Ferguson, 46, of Mauldin, was added last summer because a rare disease has destroyed his kidneys. While he waits, he spends five hours a day, three days a week, at a dialysis clinic in Greenville.

"It does keep you alive, but there are lots of side effects. Some days you pass out. Some days you're nauseous. Some days you ache all over," said Ferguson, who works part-time as a radio show host. "A transplant would give me back my freedom."

On average, 45 South Carolinians on organ waiting lists die yearly, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

That includes Justin Sipe, who died in February 2006 at age 23 after a year and a half waiting for a lung transplant.

Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 3 months old, medical care allowed Sipe to live a relatively normal childhood — playing soccer, the trumpet and hunting — until his health kept him home.

"Time ran out on him before he could get a new set of lungs," said his father, Alan Sipe, of Garden City Beach. "You keep a bag packed because, if you do get the call, you've got to be ready to go. He was issued a pager. We wanted to hear that pager go off, but it never did."

Sipe now helps promote organ donations. He said he hopes the registry can spare other families from the loss he suffered.

The registry also should remove the stress of a decision from grieving family members, said former Rep. Bob Walker, who introduced the 2007 measure creating it.

"It makes it easier for grief counselors and people at the hospital to talk to the family and say, 'This is his wish,' " Walker said.

When a May 1994 car accident killed Ed Billings' 19-year-old son, Billings initially balked at a donation request.

"It was a very traumatic moment," said Billings, whose son was on his way to meet his parents at Lake Murray when the car in which he was riding flipped.

Thad Billings' wallet was never found, but his father recalled that several years earlier, when his son got his license, he'd checked the box to be an organ donor.

"It was hard at the moment to do," Billings said. "Since then, it's provided for us the only silver lining we could find in this whole affair."

Though never directly contacted by the patients Thad helped, the family did receive anonymous Christmas cards for a while. Then, a couple of years ago, Billings received a call from the son of the patient who received Thad's heart, thanking him for adding 10 years to his dad's life.