Today's the day you can make a commitment to saving multiple lives.
On this National Donate Life Blue and Green Day you're asked to wear blue or green and consider registering online or indicating on your driver's license that you want your organs and tissues donated, if doctors are unable to save your life.
"You can potentially save up to nine, ten lives if all organs and tissues and everything is used," says Dr. Juan Arenas, Chief of Solid Organ Transplant, Memorial Transplant Institute at Memorial Healthcare System.
He asks you then share the decision with your family, "If the decision, you know, to become an organ donor comes up, it'll be easier, you know, ahead of time that their wishes were to become organ donors."
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Of the record 36,500 transplants performed in the United States last year, more than 5,300 were in Florida, with the majority being kidneys.
But Dr. Arenas stresses, "We still have a pretty significant gap between organ donors and the number of recipients on the list. So people still die on the waiting list, unfortunately."
He knows misconceptions about organ donation scare people away, but he emphasizes doctors and hospital staff do everything they can to save a person's life before turning the decision over to families about terminating life support.
Click here to register as an organ donor.