As I noted in the previous entry, after nearly ten years of hell and until his sudden illness and death from an unrelated cause, my dad had about eight glorious fully active months of good health again, because he received a kidney transplant. Please, please, please consider filling out and carrying with you an organ donor card and/or the equivalent on your state's driver's license, and make sure that your family knows your wishes to be an organ donor upon your death.
If you work for the federal government (and similar policies exist for many states and private corporations), you are eligible for up to 30 days of paid leave to serve as a live organ donor, or up to seven days of leave to donate bone marrow.
In lieu of flowers for my father's funeral, we suggested that family and friends consider making a donation in his name to a fund at the Virginia Transplant Center that provides medications for transplant recipients who cannot afford their own. I'd be happiest if people just completed their organ donor cards, but I'm also including the information for the fund below:
SEOPF
c/o Virginia Transplant Center
1602 Skipwith Road
Richmond, Virginia 23229
ATTN: MOB 110
SEOPF is the South-Eastern Organ Procurement Network.
Thom, please accept my sincere condolences for your loss.
I'm already an organ donor and have been since I got my drivers license at 16. My boss also gave her husband her kidney earlier this year (pretty awesome that she could) so that kind of reinforced for me how important it is to donate one's organs.