DUBLIN, Ga. — Right now, 103,223 people in the United States are on the national transplant waiting list. Most of them are waiting for kidney transplants.
According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 17 Americans die each day waiting on that list.
That's why Fairview Park Hospital kicked off National Donate Life Month, by trying to recruit donors for people like William Bailey, who got a liver transplant in 2018.
"I had a condition. It's a genetic thing called called Alpha-1 Genetic Deficiency," Bailey said.
Then he got even more bad news. Doctors found cancerous tumors on his liver.
"The last year before I had the transplant, honestly, I was basically chained to the house," Bailey said.
While waiting for a transplant, his life took a turn. He couldn't hold down his job anymore, the medications he was taking shot his memory and it all affected his gift of signing in the church choir at Faith Baptist Church.
"It just — it progressed more rapidly than they expected when they first found it. They told me I'd need a liver transplant in about ten years; it wound up being around three," Bailey said.
While he was battling his health, somebody else in the United States was also fighting for their life. That person became his donor.
Tracy Ide works as a public affairs manager with LifeLink Foundation, the organ recovery center in Georgia.
"One organ donor — there's eight organs that we have that we can help someone else with. And all the types of tissues and eyes, up to 75 people can be helped," Ide said.
Ide said there's a lot of misconceptions about organ donation, like doctors won't do everything possible to save a life if someone is an organ donor. She said that's completely false.
"The doctors who are working on you, and the nurses on — to save your life — are completely separate from the professionals that do organ donation," Ide said.
She said organ donation comes at no cost to the donor, and there's no medical condition that would completely rule somebody out from being eligible to donate.
Bailey still tears up when he thinks about the organ donor that saved his life in 2018.
"It's a really emotional thing. The thing is, I would not be here today," Bailey said.
Today, he has two kids and seven grandkids he enjoys spending time with that he wasn't sure he would have.
"There's just so many things that I could do that would not be possible," he said.
Things like being able to sing again in the choir, because somebody gave him the gift of life.
There's currently about 3,000 people in Georgia waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. 37% of residents in Laurens County are registered as donors.