When your loved one is in a hospital bed clinging to life like a bat to a ledge, when you are unwilling to let a doctor’s “no” be the final word, you can turn to the Internet.

The Websites say it all: DonationforCynthia.com, EveretNeedsaLiver.com, HelpJohnnieWorthen.com, KenNeedsaLiver.com, Byrons-Liver.com, JoeNeedsaLiver.com, BabyMarkJr.com, and MichaelNeedsaLiver.com.

The sites are part of Links for Life, a Web network of people who not only need organs but also promote donors, donations and information.

Organ education

“It’s a way to get our message out and to help educate people who may think about becoming donors,” said Jo Lynn Smith, the sister of Michael Corder of MichaelNeedsaLiver.com. “It’s putting faces on statistics.”

Organ transplants from liver to spleen are common and routine. Unfortunately, transplantable organs are scarce and need is great. More than 87,000 people are on the national waiting list and most won’t make it to the operating room. That puts medical personnel in the position of deciding who gets treated and who is left to die.

Not all family members agree with the decisions, however, and that’s led to a cottage industry of people seeking help outside of the usual medical hierarchy. Links for Life is one method. LifeSharers.com, an organization of organ donors who agree to give each other first dibs on any spare parts upon their demise, is another example.

“Michael is critically ill. He’s been in hospitals for five months and he’s not on the list for a transplant because [doctors] don’t feel that, because of the shortage of organs, they can put him on it,” Ms. Smith said.

Michael Corder is from Pine Bluff, Ark. He’s languishing in Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. Although he’s only 31, doctors will not put him on a transplant list because he suffers cirrhosis caused by alcoholism.

That, by the way, is the same illness that damaged the livers of Mickey Mantle, Larry Hagman and David Crosby. The difference is they have fame and money and two of the three are still living.

Recruiting medical help

Ms. Smith wants her brother to keep living so she is seeking help from other hospitals and other organ centers. She’s also recruiting future donors wherever she goes.

“When you’ve got family in the hospital and they’re sick, you’ve got to do your best to take care of them. The doctors have a lot of patients and are not necessarily looking out for all of them,” she said. “I talk with people about being donors and I hear the most ridiculous things like ‘I’m not ready for that, yet.’ Well, who knows when they are going to die?”

What saddens Ms. Smith is that people die every day without giving their organs and others will die for lack of those organs.

“It just doesn’t have to be that way,” she said.

Make your organ donor status known to your family. Contact me at (434) 978-7271 or bmckenzie@dailyprogress.com.