Dick Cheney Quotes

I blacked out in a Rite Aid. The doctor told me my heart function was at 5 percent. I spent two months in the hospital waiting to have a transplant. For me, that was the end of the world.

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.

Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.

Transplant is a life-changing 'experience. Organ donation transforms lives. It is torture for you, torment for you as an individual in need.

the incredible new medical technology has made it possible for highly disciplined teams of surgeons ... to keep stricken organisms alive even if the brain is irretrievably damaged or lung and heart incapable of functioning without mechanical help. Now it is not dust to dust, but human to vegetable.

An Israeli man's life was saved when he was given a Palestinian man's heart in a heart transplant operation. The guy is doing fine, but the bad news is, he can't stop throwing rocks at himself.

I was stillborn. The midwives laid me aside, thought I was really gone. I laid there about an hour, and they picked me back up and tried again, 'cause my body was still warm. The Good Lord brought me back.

The artificial heart is very effective as a bridge to transplant, but the number of people that can be saved with human hearts is limited. A perfect artificial heart could save many more patients.

I encourage everyone I know to sign an organ donor card, but if someone doesn't want to sign, that's his or her choice. If someone isn't willing to give an organ, however, why should that person be allowed to receive an organ?

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there's not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery.

It is important to note that there are no age limitations on who can donate organs and tissue. Newborns as well as senior citizens have been organ donors.

When my father passed away, he had his organs donated. In that painful moment, I was deeply comforted knowing that my father would be able to give others a second chance at life. That is why I encourage everyone to sign up to be a donor.

Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.

I was convinced that eventually I would die of heart disease, that we'd run out of time and out of treatment, the technology wouldn't keep ahead of my disease. And now all of the sudden, when you get the new heart, your life opens up before you again.

I think you should automatically donate your organs because that would turn the balance of organ donation in a huge way. I would donate whatever anybody would take, and I'd probably do the cremation bit.

Who transplanted sustains

My success in transplanting arteries between animals has pioneered surgical techniques that being closer the day when hearts and other organs will be transplanted into humans. No effort should be spared to reach this goal.

I'm grateful for the doctors that'll be scooping out these lungs and giving me some more life to work with. I'm grateful for the chance to keep being a person.

My dad gave me one of his kidneys.

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart.

People who are living donors who give kidneys. You can't give a heart and you can't give a liver, but you can sure give a lung - well, kidneys, anyhow. And that's where the main part of this whole thing is - one out of every eight people, I believe, is going to have some kind of kidney problem during their lifetime.

You can't have my heart, the doctor told me I'd be dead without it.

[when asked about what he was most thankful about]: Being alive. After heart surgery, you dig that part. Breath, family and friends are just amazing. Just to have a second shot is pretty great!

A heart's a hard thing to live without. I should know. I've tried it," he said.

It gave me a second chance. I'd like everybody to have a second chance if they need it, so I'm trying to let people know how important it is to become an organ donor.