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Today is African-American Organ Donation Awareness Day.
It’s a nationwide educational program
designed to get more minority thinking about this lifesaving process.
As Fox 5’s Allison Seymour reports in tonight’s On Call,
it is a cry for help already answered by one daughter and her friends.
It was the ultimate Christmas gift.
Vicki Lambert donated half of her liver to her mother
who was then struggling with a rare progressive liver disease.
But it feels good not to see here suffer.
Now, almost eight months later and disease-free,
Pearl Lambert has a new lease on life and a fresh attitude to go along with it.
I feel good.
I'm taking the rejection medicine because my liver can reject hers any time
so they told me I had to take the medicine.
I feel really good.
People tell me I don’t look like I had a liver transplant.
The surgery was a complicated one,
where the liver was divided by a major artery into parts
then transplanted and reconnected to al the blood vessels.
The entire procedure took about 13 hours.
Still Vicky says she’d do it all again.
This has made her just like made her do a 360.
She’s mom again. She’s Pearl.
Dr. Lynt Johnson was part of the surgical team at Georgetown University Hospital.
Her mother was very, very sick
and she stepped forward and the surgery went great and they're both doing fine.
Now these women say they are on a crusade to raise awareness
and funds for organ donation and transplants.
Why let somebody die when you can do something to help them?
The message they want to get out?
Sign your donor card and let your loved ones know
that you want to donate your organs in the case of your death.
It could mean another family stays together longer.
I'm so glad that she did what she did.
I love her, I always will. I love you.
For Fox 5 On Call, I'm Allison Seymour.
Isn’t that wonderful?
More than a quarter of the people on America’s organ donation waiting list
are African-Americans
but only 13% of donors are black.