Sparrow nurse honored for partial liver donation
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Fore more than two decades, Malinda Herrera has worked as a nurse helping patients recovering from trauma and neurological emergencies.
But last year, when she learned someone needed a liver and she could help, she stepped up.
“I feel like a very small piece of a really important big puzzle,” she tells 6 News.
Last year, she donated part of her liver – in what is known as a living donor liver donation – to another person.
Living donor liver donations are possible because the liver can regenerate. According to the University of Michigan Health System, up to 60 percent of a liver can be removed and placed in a person whose liver has failed. The section donated regenerates, and in about six weeks is the size and function of the original organ. The remaining part of the liver in the living donor also regenerates and returns to its normal size.
“Being a living donor, was an absolute privilege,” she says. “You know, we take our health for granted, I know that I did and it’s easy to do. So, having the opportunity and realizing that I had the potential to restore someone’s health by simply giving of myself. It was an incredible privilege.”
For her donation, as well as advocacy for organ donation in general, Herrera is being honored with the 2024 Gift of Life Michigan Nurse Champion award.
She tells 6 News her experiences working with patients shaped her advocacy for organ donation.
“We work with a lot of patients and then their families who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, and those injuries can leave those people in a position to be able to donate organs,” Herrera says. “And so, we have a unique opportunity to work with, actually, a fair number of patients as they transition into that portion of their injury.”
She adds there is a constant call for organ donations across the country and in Michigan.
“There is a huge need for organs all over the United States,” she says. “Here in Michigan, about 2,500 people are currently for an organ. 85% of that, there’s people waiting specifically for a kidney and another couple hundred waiting for a liver.”
Learn more about becoming an organ donor here.
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