So.... Who's registering as an organ donor?

I was supposed to write about spring and early beach season this week, summer tan and flip-flops.

However, as I was finishing my pedicure last Sunday, I heard the terrifying news about a Lebanese young lady shot dead at the exit of a nightclub.  It saddened me and caught my attention over the next few days, sanctioning me with a huge writer’s block. I’ll postpone my weekly post once again. After all, my writing does depend on my mood lately….

The news following however came very inspiring. The girl’s parents decided to donate her organs and save the lives of those in need. Quite a weird initiative in Lebanon I must say!

Post after post, people started praising the organ donation gesture, link after link led me to the National Organization for Organ & Tissue Donation & Transplantation (NOD) website, a website I browsed through and read thoroughly.

To be honest, it’s been a while I wanted to register as an organ donor and laziness was kicking over but I just discovered the steps were quite easy and oh how I would love to see every single one of my friends doing the same:

1. Register online on https://www.nodlb.org/en or at any Maliks branch;
2. Inform a family member (decision maker in case of your death such as parent, spouse, sibling) of your decision;
3. Wait 3 weeks and receive your membership card;

The cool thing about NOD is that they follow-up on continuous basis with all the hospitals of Lebanon and are informed about any death.  Accordingly, shall the deceased be registered as an organ donor, and after the approval of his family (which is why #2 above is quite important!), NOD will be retrieving the donated organs (the retrieval is done through operation and no disfiguration would occur on the body) and then passing them to the registered receivers. And the coolest thing about all this is that anyone under the age of 70 is usually eligible to save a life!

Ultimately, one donor can save many persons once deceased. So why be remembered with tears when you can be remembered with gratitude and live through another person’s smile?