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EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) April is National Donate Life Month, dedicated to raising awareness of donating organs and to thank those who have donated.
Heyma Chavez, an El Paso mother, is honoring her son Ivan Bustamante, who died and donated his organs to three people in need.
“He was trying to get on top of the hood of a car to sit down, and he lost his balance and just fell and hit his head. From that moment, it was just, he was just not able to recover from there,” Chavez said.
Bustamante died two days later, Chavez said.
Chavez said nurses at the hospital got her in contact with Southwest Transplant Alliance, a non-profit organization that helps organ donors, recipients and families throughout the transplant journey.
About every nine minutes, another person is added to a wait list for an organ, and on average, 17 people die every day because the organ they needed was not donated, according to the Donate Life Texas website.
Roughly 107,000 people are on the transplant waiting list, including over 10,000 Texans, according to Donate Life Texas.
According to Southwest Transplant Alliance, there are seven steps in the organ donation process:
- Donor registration
- Signing up is the first step to saving lives.
- Lifesaving efforts
- Emergency medical personnel immediately begin lifesaving procedures on the patient.
- Patient care
- Once doctors determine a patient will not survive, the hospital refers the patient to Southwest Transplant Alliance and is then determined if the patient is a potential organ donor.
- Donation Evaluation
- STA works with hospitals to evaluate if donation is an option.
- Family Discussion
- Once the patient is pronounced brain dead or the family decides to discontinue ventilator support, STA will talk to the family to gain organ donor authorization.
- Donation surgery
- A list of donor matches is provided from a national database.
- Ongoing care
- STA provides donor families with ongoing care, including recognition of how many lives their loved one saved, as well as donation and grief support.
Chavez said her son donated and saved three people: A 30-year-old man received Bustamante’s pancreas and left kidney, a woman received Bustamante’s other kidney and a teen similar in Bustamante’s age received his heart.
“I’m a very religious person, I believe in God, I always had the sensation that God will give me a sign that I was doing the right thing. I believe that kid, that was my son’s age, receiving his heart was the sign. Everything was going to be okay and that I was doing the right thing,” Chavez said.
To learn more about Southwest Transplant Alliance, you can visit their website.