Santa Barbara County resident Joe Darga always thought of himself as a pretty healthy person. He led an active lifestyle and didn’t have many health problems. But when he was 61 years old, Darga said, he “started getting tired in the afternoons.”
“I just thought it was part of getting older. Old people need their naps, so I didn’t think anything of it,” he recalled at a recent event at Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria.
But Darga eventually decided to get a check-up, where X-rays revealed he had an enlarged heart. The diagnosis: Cardiomyopathy, a degenerative disease that inhibits the heart’s ability to pump blood.
Darga continued to receive treatment at Cottage Hospital for several years, but to no avail.
“I’ll never forget the day [my doctor] came in and told me, ‘Joe, my bag of tricks is empty. At this point, I can either refer you to UCLA for a heart transplant or to hospice.’”
Darga and his wife decided to try for a transplant—a long shot given his age and rapidly declining health.
“I was very sick,” Darga said, his voice thick with emotion. “I was down to 103 pounds and I was eating through a feeding tube in my nose. I didn’t think I was going to make it … but then that family in Stockton said ‘yes.’”
And what, exactly, did that family say ‘yes’ to?
Organ donation.
Because of that family’s decision to donate their loved one’s organs, Darga said, he got a new heart, a woman got new lungs, and two men got new kidneys.
“And now I’m enjoying life because someone—a stranger—said ‘yes,’” said the now 76-year-old Darga. “It’s the most wonderful thing that one person can do; pass life on to another person. There aren’t even words in my vocabulary to describe how wonderful it is.”
On April 23, Darga shared his life-altering experience at Marian Medical Center as part of an event to encourage people to register with the Donate Life California Organ and Tissue Donor Registry.
According to hospital officials, there are currently more than 20,400 people in California waiting to receive life-saving organ, bone, and tissue transplants.
“While some TV shows like to portray organ donation as taking something from someone, you know better,” One Legacy CEO Tom Mone told Marian staffers attending the event. “You know it’s about giving someone life.”
One Legacy is the Donate Life organization responsible for managing organ donations in the southern California area.
The organization sends grief specialists to hospitals to help families decide whether or not they want to have their loved one’s organs donated. Later, a medical specialist is sent to pick up the organs and deliver them to the sickest patients.
“We want to help them see that something good can come out of their tragedy,” Mone said.
The specialist stays in contact with the donor’s family members to offer support, and sends them letters when the donation is complete. The letters say how many donations occurred, what kind of donations occurred, and the ages and locations of the recipients.
These donations are incredibly important, but Mone said there is an even greater need for “living donors” (people willing to give portions of their bone marrow, tissues, kidney, and other organs).
“It’s absolutely essential if you want to keep people on the donor list alive,” he said.
For Santa Marian Artie Ponce, it was a matter of life and death.
“One day [Artie] woke up all swollen. He was really sick,” said his mother Maria, who works in Marian’s radiology department.
Maria immediately took her son to Children’s Hospital in Santa Barbara.
“The doctor took one look at him and said, ‘His kidneys are failing,’” Maria said. “I thought he was crazy. How could a kid who has never had a cold or an earache have kidney failure?”
The doctors were going to start looking for a donor when Maria remembered she had a card in her wallet with her blood type printed on it: O-positive, the same as Artie.
“I just kind of stepped up to the plate and said, ‘I’m the one to do it,’” she said.
Today, Artie is 18 years old and “knows the importance of organ donation and the value of life,” Maria said, adding, “I think God brought us all here for a reason … and that’s to give back and to help others in some way.”
Contact News Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 6, 2010.