Cornea Donors Preserve Gift Of Sight

At the SightLife office in the Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center complex, Mike Meyer, left, holds the containers used to store and transport donated human corneas that Kelly Uttke, eye bank technician, right, recovers from donors around the region. (SR photo: Jesse Tinsley)

The team of Spokane technicians who collect corneas from the newly dead respond as needed, 24 hours a day, traveling their expansive territory – from the Cascades to the Idaho-Montana border, from the Canada border to the Oregon border – to recover tissue from unseeing eyes. Their mission: to help restore sight in the living. Working from the Eastern Washington offices of SightLife, the eye bank serving the Northwest, the technicians run two Subaru Outbacks from their lab at Maria House at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. Corneas must be “recovered” within 24 hours of the donor’s death, but the sooner they’re placed into preservation fluid to be flown to Seattle for storage, the better. Where the technicians’ work will take them is as impossible to predict as the moment of death/ Adrian Rogers , SR. More here.

Question: Are you an organ donor?