Donating organs seen as action imitating Jesus

One way Catholics can emulate Jesus during Lent, she noted, is to consider making the sacrifice of organ donation when they pass away.

Dr. Knudsen, spokesperson for the Carondelet Health System and the Daughters of Charity National Health System on end-of-life issues, also spoke of the need for filling out healthcare proxy forms to make one's wishes known should a debilitating illness arise.

Proxy

Healthcare proxy forms are available by contacting attorneys, hospitals or the New York State Office for the Aging. People can designate someone to make healthcare decisions for them and fill out a form stating their specific wishes for care.

However, Dr. Knudsen cautioned that a "durable power of attorney" form is the only kind that covers healthcare issues. Giving a loved one power of attorney to write checks from a bank account is not the same.

In writing

Filling out a proxy form doesn't mean telling a physician and family not to provide a person with any care, she said; proxies don't come into play unless patients are unable to make decisions on their own.

Dr. Knudsen also noted that filling out a healthcare proxy form doesn't mean one's wishes are written in stone. She advises patients to review their forms and alter them as needed.

"Your decisions can change with time," she said. "It can change with the illness you're confronting and where you're at in the spectrum of it."

As an internal medicine specialist at St. Mary's Hospital in Amsterdam, the doctor often encounters patients who are uncomfortable with the idea of having a healthcare proxy.

"People are fearful because they don't want to confront the fact that we're all going to die," she said. "You have a will for your property, your possessions. Having a will to direct your health care is the same thing."

Donation

"There's a great shortage" of organs for those in need, Dr. Knudsen said, and it's acceptable for Catholics to donate their organs. "It also goes along with the Christian ethics of helping others. We believe the organs won't be useful to us in the life after."

The main way people notify healthcare providers that they want to be organ donors is by signing the line on their driver's license that says so. A spouse, however, can override that decision, the doctor noted.

Gift of life

Dr. Knudsen asked that as Catholics consider filling out healthcare proxy forms, they also consider including organ donation in their directives.

Though His death on the cross, Jesus "is the ultimate role model for us," she stated. "There's more to us than our work on earth. To be worried about ourselves only and `how it affects me' doesn't get to the whole picture of how it is here on earth and what our `jobs' may entail."

One's life's work, she said, may include helping someone else to live.

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