Thinking about Organ Donation in Japan

      I read a Japanese article about organ donation this month. A teen boy was undergoing for treatment for brain damage at a hospital in Japan, but he was finally determined brain death sadly. His family decided to donate his organ this month. He donated his organs for four patients such as heart, liver, pancreas and kidney. Organ donation is very rare in Japan especially young organ donors, so many Japanese people looked at this news. While Japanese health system is world-class, Japanese organ transplant system and skills has been lagging far behind other countries. Because Japanese people believe that when heart stops, the person is considered dead. Majority of people in Japan don't want to stop treatments even after brain death. After reading this article, I read many comments on it. Some people left positive comments about organ donation and showed respects for his family's decision because it was very difficult for parents to decide to stop life-supporting treatment for their loved child. In contrast, many people are still in doubt of it. They say how doctors could mutilate his body while he was still alive.
      Through my experience as a nurse in Japan, I saw many patients who underwent life-supporting treatment for many years. Japanese medical system is very good, so the family doesn't have to think about cost of treatments too much. However, we never know whether or not patients want to get the treatment after brain death. Increasingly, patients' appearance become much different than when they were healthy because of muscle atrophy and contractures of joints, and they often fall into many critical conditions such as sever pneumonia. Most families come to hospital to see the patients every single day and spend their time for many hours in the patients' room. It doesn't matter how severe outside weather is, such as cold, hot, rainy and typhoon. They come to see the patients day after day. I saw many families that had become worn out by looking after patients for many years. I thought life-supporting treatments prolong family's grief.
     I also saw many patients with kidney failure in Japan were waiting for kidney transplant. They needed to receive hemodialysis three times a week for rest of their life and had to follow a severe restrictive diet. They are supposed to wait for many decades for kidney transplant because there are few organ donors in Japan. Some patients end up going to other country to get a kidney transplanted and come back to the hospital in Japan for treatment of the transplanted kidney rejection. After treatment, their life becomes much better than ever before. They don't need to undergo hemodialysis and restrictive diet anymore.
    In my opinion, organ donation positively changes donors, their family, and receiver's lives in most cases. If I am sentenced brain dead, I'd like to donate my organs. After organ donation, my life is not over. I can help some people's lives for rest of their lives. I can make their lives happier and will be proud of myself. It is not an easy decision, but I believe it is the best choice for me and my family.  
    Until Japanese organ donation law changed in 2010, Japan on average carried out 10 transplant surgeries per year. However, 45 organ transplantation was done last year. Yet the numbers of transplantation was still small considering that an average of 68 transplants are performed in the US every day.