More: Doctors say don't delay hospital care for health emergencies during coronavirus pandemic More: Milford community to honor, grieve lost loved ones in past year during pandemic More: Detroit surgeon saves life of 85-year-old South Lyon man other hospitals turned away The advancement of immunosuppressants, drugs given to prevent rejection of donated organs, have increased the ability to match individuals. Instead, matching relies heavily on blood type, as well as the antigens unique to individuals and which trigger immune response.
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"It really has to do with genetic diseases, high blood pressure, kidney disease, hereditary diseases more common in that population."Įthnicity and skin color are not part of the matching process for organ and tissue transplants, Dils said. “The transplant list is highly populated with people of color," Dils said. There were hundreds of people on the transplant list in front of her, particularly people of color like herself. Just a month before her husband’s death, LaKeisha Dulin stopped working in business development for Comcast on her doctor’s orders as her health deteriorated. She was crushed in an unbearable sadness, but also had two young children depending on her: Shane, whom she and her husband had adopted at birth, and her niece, Saniya Hughes, whom they had been in the process of adopting. LaKeisha Dulin wondered after losing her husband of 14 years if she might be among the people she had heard of who died of a broken heart. Their son, Shane, who was in the front seat with his father, was not physically harmed.
Her heart’s function steadily declined and she suffered a crippling blow to it in May 2018 when her husband, Robert Dulin, was killed in a car crash. Born with an enlarged heart and missing valve with a condition known as tricuspid atresia, she had two surgeries before the age of 8. LaKeisha Dulin, 42, of Canton was added to the long list of those waiting for a transplant four years ago. Twenty people die every day waiting for a life-saving transplant in the U.S., and someone is added to the national list, on average, about every 10 minutes. In Michigan, there are more than 2,500 individuals on the transplant list and nationwide, 108,000 people are waiting for a transplant. Vaccinations and increased medical knowledge about the virus is helping conquer pandemic issues, but even after 50 years of education about organ donation and its power to save and change lives, Gift of Life continues to battle misconceptions and fight for more individuals to sign up for the donor registry and talk to their families about their wish to help others. The number could have been even higher, Dils added, if not for the pandemic, which hindered life-saving transplants for a variety of reasons, including hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients stopping surgeries many would-be organ donors dying at home from heart attacks or strokes and the coronavirus infection itself tainting organs. “In spite of the pandemic, we had our third record-breaking year in a row. “Last year we had 372 organ donors, which resulted in 1,048 transplants,” CEO Dorrie Dils said.
These are two of the thousands of successful organ transplants celebrated by Gift of Life Michigan, which marks its 50th anniversary this year amid a pandemic and challenges that continue to inhibit its mission of saving lives.
The kidneys of Thelma Desjarlais were failing, but her sister-in-law had one to spare, with a few stipulations. LaKeisha Dulin was dying from a heart broken in more ways than one, but now has a second chance at life and love. Watch Video: Canton resident LaKeisha Dulin talks about getting a heart transplant
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