Next Saturday marks the 10th annual National Donor Day.

I'll explain why the day should be important to you. But first let me say why it is significant to me.

In August of 1999, I went to the emergency room feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach. I had lost a lot of weight over the previous months, yet my feet would sometimes swell.

After taking my blood pressure several times, a nurse became frantic. She said my numbers were in heart attack range. So I was rushed to a room and doctors and nurses began taking blood, giving me fluids and asking a million questions. At one point a doctor came in and wanted to know the list of narcotics I was hooked on.

Before I could say anything, he narrowed his eyes and repeated his question, "Don't lie to us, what street drugs are using?"

The same physician would return later to apologize, pat me on the shoulder and tell me that I was a very sick man.

"You have end-stage renal failure," he said. "Your kidneys have stopped functioning."

I was told that I would have to have to go a kidney dialysis center three days a week where I would be hooked to a machine that would serve as an artificial kidney to clean my blood since my own kidneys could no longer perform that job.

I also learned that I could be placed on the organ transplant list if I was healthy enough.

Of course, the period leading up the transplant was both trying and memorable. I was often in and out of hospital for minor surgeries and illnesses.

I remember one hospital stay where the name on the door to my room read Scott Whitney. When the nurse came in, I informed her of the mistake.

"It is Witten," I said.

"Whitted?" she replied.

"No Witten ... " I said, then remembering that people like to add an h. "Like kitten but with a W."

"Witten, like Kitten," she said. "That's cute"

At the end of a long shift, the nurse came by to say good night.

"I'll see you in the morning Mr. Kitten," she said in all seriousness. Then she looked at her watch, turned and left.

There was also the time that I had to have a biopsy at Duke. After the procedure was done, I was told that I would have to stay in the hospital overnight because there was a slight chance of internal bleeding, and that I should not move around for at least six hours.

At some point during my stay I was in need of the plastic container that hangs on the side of the bed. Mine was missing so I asked a nurse passing by my room for one. The nurse — a sweet-natured older woman who said her name was Beatrice — said she would return with a container and help me.

Help me? That was strange. I wasn't helpless, I just wasn't suppose to be walking around.

True to her word, Beatrice insisted on assisting me through the process. To pass the time I stared at the ceiling. Beatrice, on the other hand, used the time to check out the television behind her. She seemed gripped by a fit of the giggles as she watched CNN. My hospital stay coincided with one of Michael Jackson's molestation trials. The image on the TV screen was of the pop star dressed in pajamas moving at a snail's pace toward the courthouse.

"That Michael Jackson is really something," she said as she shifted to get a better view.

I was thinking the same thing about Nurse Beatrice since between her belly laughs and shifting about, my plastic container's output was exceeding its input.

She apologized profusely when she realized what had happened and said she would get some dry sheets.

After about 20 minutes, it dawned on me that Beatrice must be watching the Michael Jackson trial in another patient's room.

I hit the nurse's call button.

"Can I help you," a voice said in very unhelpful manner.

I told her I had an accident. I didn't know how else to describe it.

"What kind of accident?" the voice said with a sigh, then not waiting for a reply, she said she would be right there.

When I explained what happened, the new nurse explained to me that there was no worker on that floor named Beatrice or fitting my detailed description.

Then, with a look that one reserves for crazy, bed wetting patients with imaginary friends, she went to find some new sheets.



Be a donor

It would take six years before I would get a call that a kidney had become available. Next month will mark my fifth year as an organ recipient. I never knew the donor. All I know is that she was a woman and she apparently died in car accident. But she and her family wanted to donate her organs in the event of her death. For that I am forever grateful.

That gift has allowed me to have a normal life again. I have to take about 30 pills a day to keep my body from rejecting the donated kidney, but it is a trade off I would make any day.

You too can make a difference in someone's life. The need is certainly great and growing. There are almost 95,000 people in need of an organ transplant.

In addition, every two seconds someone in America needs blood, more than 39,000 units each day, according to the American Red Cross.

Think about filling out an organ and tissue donation card. Register with the state donor registry and make sure your family knows you want to be a donor. Join the national registry of potential volunteer marrow and blood stem cell donors. Donate blood.

Valentine's Day is the day of love. Can you think of a more loving gesture than making Feb. 14 the day you join thousands of Americans in making the donation decision?

I can't.