Covid has made everyone sick and depressed. Staying inside the homes without extra activities has made everyone feel caged and has given them depression. The screenwriter of “Dawson’s Creek,” Heidi Ferrer’s just like most of us, was going through the same feeling hopeless for the past Covid years, and in May, she finally decided to give her life away in LA.
Before she left us, she left a video message for her son and her husband in which she mentioned that she was sick, and if she was not, she would not have done this. The sickness she talked about was mentally sick with depression and anxiety.
Nick Guthe, who is Heidi Ferrer’s husband, decided to donate her body for the testing and trial scientifically. This appeal of her husband was denied by the hospital, claiming that he could not make decisions on her behalf and she had already signed the contract to donate her organs. So to fulfill her wishes, the doctors recovered her organs and donated them to the hospitals and people in need.
This case was serious and raised a new and worrisome question of whether or not it is safe to donate organs of covid infected living or dead patients to the healthy or affected recipient. The transplant is already too risky, so with little to no Covid infection studies, the transplants could result in more serious complications at the time of surgery and even afterward.
Previously the organ donation was considered safe by donating the organs of a covid 19 recovered patient to a healthy person. It was seen that this kind of donation did not create any serious complications. In recent years, the rules of organ donations have been relaxed, and now the HIV positive can also donate.
The donors who were covid positive and died because of Covid are avoided for the transplantation of their lungs as that can cause serious and long-term lung damage. This virus has been found to be present in other organs like the heart, kidney, liver, and other organ tissues of about 60 percentage point patients of coronavirus. Even after this discovery, as long as the patient did not have any symptoms, the kidneys and the livers are being transplanted of patients that died of covid.
Dr. David Klassen, who is a chief medical officer at the United Network for Organ Sharing, said that a risky calculation and people who are waiting for such an organ donation are so seriously ill that they can even die if they do not receive an organ soon.
Dr. Deepali Kumar, who is the society’s president-elect, said that there would be no assurance of organs from the covid positive donors who had active COvid with symptoms.
Further adding to this, Dr. Deepali Kumar said that we could not turn down the people who had covid in the past because if we do so, then we would be left with little to no organs for donation, so we will have to accept them. Also, the risk of such donation is quite low.
The organ procurement and transplant network committee provided a report that stated that the organs from the patients who earlier had been infected by the covid 19, those who have deceased from Covid, and those that are presently living and decided to donate, can donate the organs but their outcomes can not be guessed at this stage. There needs to be more data and experiments to predict the outcomes. However, if the patients and doctors still decide to donate, then they should be very careful.
The delta variant of the coronavirus has spread really fast and almost all the cases reported have delta variants in them. This infection is stronger than the other variants and is more deadly too. Right now, there is not much research that could give the perfect prediction of infection duration.
Dr. Jennifer D. Possick, who is an associate professor at the Yale School of medicine and has a clinic too, said that we can now detect the organ damage that was caused by the covid. But these tests are not totally perfect with no errors. We still have not reached that state of total perfection, so it is best to practice care.
The risk for such a patient is a lot as when organs are being donated, the patients are required to take medication that depresses the rejection of organs by their natural immune cells in their bodies. If they get covid, their immunity will be even worse, and there be more infections and slow healing, which will not be enough to save them in most cases. So the risks are there.
Guthe said that as much as I try to explain that the COVID and the long haul are not the same things and they can not be compared. Covid affects the whole body and its immunity. It is deadly and painful, so it should be avoided and taken care of.
Guthe had been taking Ivermectin which was prescribed falsely in hopes of fighting Covid. She took these in large amounts, which had caused damage to her liver. Her kidneys were healthy, so they were donated successfully and without any complications to the two men having an end staged kidney disease.
Guthe mentioned that he made her a promise of spreading awareness among people about the Covid effects. After the long wait of five days, Ferrer was discharged from the ventilator. After this, Guthe was set on another mission of his life which was to create awareness and guidelines for the people about what needed to be prevented and avoided; he further said that Heidi was a very generous, kind, and giving person. This is not what she would have desired.
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