Family Comes First: Saving Lives with Organ Transplants

Sadly, each day, 22 men, women, and children die waiting to receive a life-saving organ transplant. Fortunately, over 650,000 lives have been saved since 1988 with the help of donors—many of them not biologically related to the recipient.

On this brand new episode of Family Comes First™, “Saving Lives,” we meet with Cindy Somma, who decided to give the gift of life to a relative and ended up saving the life of another.

Join us on Monday, September 19th at 1:30 pm on Telecare (Cablevision channels 29 and 137, Time Warner channels 106 (Manhattan), 471 (Queens) or Verizon FiOS TV channel 296) as Cindy shares with us her journey when choosing to donate her kidney—and how she unexpectedly ended up saving the life of a stranger.

Also joining us on this brand new episode of Family Comes First™ is Gillian Cohen, a young woman who was given the gift of life through a liver transplant when she was just 7 years old. She shares how this experience has inspired her to be an advocate with LiveOnNY to promote organ donation.

We also welcome Karen Cummings, from LiveOnNY, to share how someone can register to become a donor, and how important it is to educate the community on organ donation so they, too, can save lives. Karen explains, “…one person can actually save up to 8 lives through organ donation because you can donate both kidneys, both lungs, your liver, pancreas, your heart. One person can donate up to 8 organs via transplants and enhance up to 50 lives through tissue implants.” She hopes to carry out LiveOnNY’s mission to create a culture of donation. They hope one day, it will not be unusual to discuss organ donation and there will be less of a stigma about doing so.

If you miss the premiere of this heartwarming and inspirational show, this episode, “Saving Lives” will also air on Wednesday at 9:30 am & 10:30 pm, and Thursday at 1:30 pm.

Family Comes First™ airs exclusively on Telecare TV: Cablevision channels 29 and 137, Time Warner channels 106 (Manhattan), 471 (Queens), or Verizon FiOS TV Channel 296. For more on Family Comes First™, please follow us on Facebook or visit our Family Comes First website.