UPMC Washington holds annual flag-raising ceremony for National Donate Life Month
In honor of National Donate Life Month, UPMC Washington Hospital and UPMC Greene held their annual flag-raising ceremony Friday to celebrate organ donation.
“This flag honors donors, celebrates recipients who have been given the gift of life, and kicks off National Donate Life Month,” said Larry Pantusso, Vice President of Strategy and Clinical Services at UPMC Washington and UPMC Greene. “Throughout April, we will take time to honor those who have selflessly given the gift of life, celebrate transplant donors, their families, recipients, and those still waiting for a lifesaving transplant.”
The event was coordinated by Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE), a nonprofit that is commemorating National Donate Life Month to encourage awareness of organ donation and registrations. CORE is holding a series of events in partnership with hospitals, volunteers and officials in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Currently, more than 100,000 people nationwide are waiting for a lifesaving transplant, including more than 7,000 in Western Pennsylvania and nearly 500 in West Virginia.
The ceremony was highlighted by Dan Warzinski, 46, of Carnegie, who had received a heart and liver transplant at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital on Oct. 4, 2022.
Warzinski was born with a single-ventricle heart, meaning one of the two pumping chambers is not large enough or strong enough to work correctly.
He had surgery as a baby, and a second procedure at age 10.
“That set me up for a normal life: school, a full-time job,” said Warzinski.
But at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he realized something was wrong.
Warzinski often walked as many as 10 miles a day on the Montour Trail, but found he could only go a half-mile before tiring out.
He had a pacemaker implanted in 2021, and doctors told him he also had liver failure. He was placed on the transplant list for a heart and liver transplant, and in September 2022 he entered UPMC Presbyterian as an inpatient to elevate his status as a donor recipient.
“On Oct. 3, my heart surgeon said they found a donor and I’d have the heart surgery the next day,” recalled Warzinski.
He underwent a 16-hour surgery and spent two weeks in the hospital before returning home.
In January 2023, Warzinski ended up with an infection that he battled for about five months, but he said his recovery went well other than that.
“Ever since that, I’ve been rolling right along. I’ve noticed so many changes with the way I feel,” said Warzinski, noting he is able to breathe and think more clearly, and he is walking long distances again. “I just feel really, really good.”
And he is grateful to his donor and his donor’s family.
“As I’m doing better and better, obviously there was a cost to that. There’s a family out there that will never be the same, that is obviously grieving,” said Warzinski, who plans to reach out to the donor family at some point.
“I can’t thank them enough. It’s the biggest gift,” said Warzinski. “I’ll be here to see my daughter graduate, and maybe she’s lucky enough to have kids and a family, and I’ll be around for that. It’s been an unbelievable ride, and I’m just very thankful to everyone, for CORE, my doctors, my family, and to still be around.”
The ceremony was capped off with the raising of a National Donate Life Month flag in front of the hospital.
Each organ donor has the potential to save up to eight lives through donating their hearts, kidneys, lungs and more, and to improve the lives of an additional 75 people through tissue donations for procedures like skin grafts.
Don Gamble of CORE said 2024 was the sixth consecutive year CORE saw record-breaking transplants, including 472 organ donors who made 970 life-saving transplants possible, and 1,654 tissue donors who provided tissue transplantation to 125,000 people, including bone repairs, skin grafts and heart valve replacements.