With their Lincoln house on the market and a countdown ticker to the end of April, the Greiner family plans to take a one-year hiatus and tour the country in the interest of organ donor promotion.
It is an unconventional family affair, but one that Mike Greiner sees as a necessary project that he said he hopes can be a small payback for donations he received in 2003.
Greiner was the recipient of a pancreas and kidney donation. Due to complications from being a Type 1 diabetic since the age of 5, the former Mortonite began to feel some “nasty” effects.
“It was a slow decline from age 11 to 35,” he said. “I was told (by doctors) to get on a transplant list.”
He was able to get on a University of Wisconsin waiting list, which required only six weeks of anticipation, as opposed to one to two years in Illinois.
Greiner received a kidney and pancreas from a woman, Annie, who died of cerebral arteriovenous malformation. Annie’s mother now holds a picture of the Greiner family.
Now 41, Greiner is diabetes free and living a fully functioning life, he said.
“I am better than I was before,” Greiner said. “I’m no longer restricted to diabetes.”
He is a happy-go-lucky guy, as is his family. The chemistry between the group is uncanny. A sense of humor will go a long way on this trip, Greiner said.
With his wife, Sheri, and two children, Levi, 12, and Chloe, 9, Greiner will embark on an adventure throughout 50 states.
“More and more people are waiting,” he said. “That means more and more people can die.”
Sheri said they are trying to eliminate the nostalgia surrounding organ donations.
“One of the big things that keeps people from registering is because it’s strange or weird,” Sheri said.
But, it is one of those things that cannot be realized until someone sees the need, she added.
“You never know until you know someone who is in that circumstance,” Sheri said.
Mike said they are trying to fight the myth that patients who are organ donors do not receive the quality of care to which they are entitled. He said some fear that doctors will not treat a patient in anticipation of receiving their organs for a donation. He calls it the “hovering” myth.
“There is no hovering,” he said.
The family’s trip has been in planning prior to Levi’s and Chloe’s birth. They began writing governors in each state asking what they should do, where they should eat and the best place in the state to live.
