Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Devin Gordon, awaiting a kidney transplant, highlights the impact of organ donors.
- DonorConnect honored donors at The Celebration of Life Monument in Salt Lake City.
- More than 200 organ donors enabled 600 transplants in Utah; misconceptions about donation persist.
SALT LAKE CITY — These are the times Devin Gordon can't get enough of when he can simply get on his motorcycle and go.
He is just worried he might not be able to do this for much longer and will be stuck inside his Woods Cross home.
"It has been a lot harder, especially over the past year. I have just been getting a lot sicker, and it has started to affect my quality of life," Gordon said.
Like nearly a thousand other Utahns, Gordon is waiting for an organ donation. In his case, he needs a kidney.
"It would change everything," he said with a smile. "To me, getting a new kidney, that would be just, I mean, I could live my life. I could be me again."
It takes a special person to donate an organ. Those who have were honored Tuesday morning.
DonorConnect held a ceremony at the Celebration of Life Monument in downtown Salt Lake City to help kick off National Donate Life Month.
Some of the families of loved ones who died and had their organs donated were there, as well as some of those who received their organs.
"Your courage and your generosity will never be fully expressed by simply saying 'thank you,'" said Liahni Chandler, one of the speakers at the ceremony.
Chandler has received a donated liver and a kidney from people she never met.
She is alive because of them.
"I wake up every day with a heart full of gratitude for the donors who gave me more time," Chandler said, "time I never expected to have."
DonorConnect is an organization dedicated to raising awareness of organ, tissue, and eye donation.
In Utah last year, DonorConnect had 212 organ donors with about 600 organ transplants.
However, some of the biggest work they do involves answering questions about it all.
"One of the big misconceptions is, if emergency responders see a heart on my driver's license, well, they're not going to try as hard to save my life, and that's just not true," the director of public education for DonorConnect, Mark Dixon, said.
There are about 10,000 names on glass panels at the memorial of 500 S. 300 East in Salt Lake City.
Each name represents someone who chose to donate their organs after they died.
"They are the real superheroes," Chandler said.
Gordon is just hoping that phone call will come his way one day.
"I know it is a waiting game, and it might take a long time," he said. "God works in mysterious ways, and I know it is going to work out just fine."
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