Orange donation recipient Lauren Shields at a recent Goshen Rotary event. (
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Who, at our Goshen Rotary meeting. could have guessed that the heart beating in our 24-year-old speaker was donated by a 4-year-old boy and her kidney was donated by her mother or, that a New York State law was named for her? Lauren Shields came to tell us about the importance of organ donations. You could have heard a pin drop during her telling.
Hearing Lauren talk can’t help but make you feel grateful to be in the room with her. There is just something about Lauren.
As a patient who was on an organ donor waiting list twice, Lauren Shields is a lucky one. On average, 17 people a day die waiting for their transplant. Eight thousand New Yorkers are on the transplant waiting listing now, some as young as two years of age.
Her journey began when she became very ill in 2007 at age 7 and ended up spending almost a year in the hospital. When it was finally determined that only a heart transplant would save her, it was two months before her heart became available. Just before that, there was going to be one last ditch effort to save her life while waiting for her heart. It would require another surgery. The next day her heart became available.
Her transplant was successful and by the time she was 9, she was speaking on behalf of organ donation at a naturalization ceremony where NYS Senator David Carlucci met her. He had been trying to get legislation to update the state organ donor program.
After that day the Senator and little girl from Rockland County became partners in the quest to encourage organ donations. They did a lot of speaking about the effort. With Senator Carlucci’s backing, a temporary law was passed in 2012 when she was 12 years old. It was made permanent a few years later.
What does Lauren’s Law do? It now requires driver’s license applicants to answer the organ donor question on their DMV form, either “yes” or “skip the question.”
There is more to Lauren’s personal story. Four years ago, when she was 20, her kidneys were failing and she spent endless time in dialysis four times a week until she was able to get one of her mom’s kidneys (she now has three kidneys – her two failed ones and her mom’s). She still remembers empathizing with those who continued their dialysis treatment for so long after she had her healthy one. Life was different then. This was during COVID and her mom couldn’t even be in the hospital with her.
And some time following her heart transplant, she became paralyzed on one side and used crutches to get around. When you meet her now, you would not even guess it.
Aside from making friends when she speaks, Lauren’ s mission in life now is to share the reality of the need for more human organs and tissues.
She came to our meeting from LiveOnNY, liveonny.org, 646-291-4444. They can help you enroll if you haven’t done it with your license. The government registry email is registry@donatelife.ny.gov.
Doris Obremski
Goshen Rotary