Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital raised its flag late Thursday morning for an honor that spurred a crowd of hospital employees to its front lawn: National Donate Life Month.
The ceremony honoring organ donors featured brief speeches from HMNH leadership, program manager Joel De Valle from the organ procurement organization OneLegacy, and Raul Sansores, a liver transplant recipient.
A crowd of nursing interns joined several members of Henry Mayo’s medical and administrative staff, from the director of patient experience to the Intensive Care Unit manager, on the grass slope behind the hospital’s front entrance flag for the event.
Many of them are intimately familiar with the circumstances leading up to organ donation, said Gilda Cruz-Manglapus, Henry Mayo’s trauma program manager.
“Some of our trauma patients end up being organ donors,” Cruz-Manglapus said. “There’s some parameters that they look at, and so if they expire within a certain number of minutes, then they’re able to … donate.”
HMNH CEO Kevin Klockenga, who opened the ceremony, thanked the crowd of medical and administrative staff for their part in making organ donation possible, and cited a statistic: As of late April, the hospital has saved six people’s lives through organ donation this year.
“Two people have had their lives or eyesight restored from eye donation as well. So it’s really amazing work, and people’s lives are transformed because of it,” Klockenga said. “I want to thank all those … that have signed up to be organ donors. It’s very important. And thank you to all of our dedicated staff who really make this happen every day.”
Sansores, who speaks about his own organ transplant on a volunteer basis for OneLegacy, described being taken to the hospital with only months left to live, after being diagnosed with end-stage liver disease in 2021.
“I can remember the day exactly, I was put in an ambulance and taken down to UCLA,” Sansores said. “Now I live in Palmdale, and I’ve driven up and down the (State Route 14) freeway countless amounts of times … I remember seeing the In-N-Out, thinking, ‘I just left everything that I knew … and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to come back,’ because I wasn’t sure this transplant was going to happen.”
Less than a month later, Sansores had his transplant. In the months that followed, Sensors said he felt the anger and confusion that comes with survivor’s guilt — and at month five, a revelation.
“I realized I had to refocus my life, because somebody had decided that they were going to donate, and now I have this new life,” Sansores said. “I don’t know my donor, I don’t know my donor’s family … but every day, I do carry my donor with me wherever I go, with whoever I meet.”
