Donate Life: Hospital honors organ donors
CANONSBURG – Washington native Rick Zatta was born in 1964, but celebrates 2017 as his “new birthday.”
“That’s when I received a new organ. I’m very fortunate,” he told a crowd who had gathered at Canonsburg Hospital Thursday to commemorate National Donate Life Month.
Zatta, an architect who helped redesign the hospital’s emergency department in 2006, went there days before Thanksgiving in 2016, after a family member commented that he looked jaundiced.
Zatta found out he was in liver failure and would need a transplant.
“It happened all of a sudden,” he said.
Over the next few months, Zatta’s health declined. He lost about 50 pounds. He hallucinated due to extremely elevated blood ammonia levels.
At the end of January, having been in the hospital for more than two months, Zatta begged to be allowed to go home, just for the weekend. His doctors agreed, but told him he’d have to come back Monday morning. But, early the morning he was due back, he got a call. There was a liver for him.
Later that day, at Allegheny General Hospital, Zatta recieved his new organ.
Natalie Reid Miller/Observer-Reporter
Natalie Reid Miller/Observer-Reporter
Rick Zatta, who had a liver transplant in 2017, talks with Louise Urban, Canonsburg Hospital president and CEO, after a ceremony honoring organ donors.
He was told later by a physician that had he not received the liver that day, he would have died within the next 48 hours.
“You don’t realize how much you change people’s lives when you donate an organ,” Zatta said.
Canonsburg Hospital, part of Allegheny Health Network, hosted a ceremony to honor those who have donated organs, tissues or corneas, and to call attention to the significant need for more people to register as donors.
According to the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, more than 115,000 people are awaiting organ transplants in the United States, including more than 7,500 people in Pennsylvania.
Through April, Americans are encouraged to register as organ, eye and tissue donors.
Speakers at the event included Canonsburg Hospital President and CEO Louise Urban, Washington County Commissioners Harlan Shober and Larry Maggi, and Joe Weber, CFO of CORE, who said that at Canonsburg Hospital last year, four cornea donors restored sight for eight recipients, and six tissue donors enhanced the lives of as many as 300 people.
“Those are precious gifts,” Weber said. “Make a choice to give a gift … and choose to change lives. The need is still great.”
For more information, visit www.donatelife.net.