Hello and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

More than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for an organ transplant in the United States.

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, a Lehigh Valley man is one of the longest surviving kidney transplant recipients in the country.

He's using his story to bring awareness to the importance of organ donation.

Taking a trip down memory lane.

This is me at eight years old.

A few weeks before I got sick and lost my lost my kidneys.

Michael Seidick is thankful for the opportunity to look back at his childhood.

Then that's a day or two after the transplant at Saint Christopher's Hospital, again.

The thing on my head I made for myself as I was being silly.

His parents had to make some tough decisions for their eight year old son who had fallen ill.

I just came back and said, his kidneys are gone.

And they were given the choices of to put me on dialysis, put me on dialysis and wait for a transplant.

Or you can let them go.

Thankfully, they chose dialysis and a transplant.

Seidick became the first Lehigh Valley resident to receive a pediatric kidney transplant at the age of nine.

That was in 1978.

A few years later, that kidney failed and he received another as a teen.

I can tell you each time you wake up from a transplant, when you wake up, you can't believe how you feel, how good you feel.

You went to the operating room feeling horrible, you know, and then when you wake up, even with tubes and you catheters, IVs, breathing tubes, you you feel alive again.

More than 40 years later, the Whitehall resident is one of the longest surviving kidney transplant recipients in the country.

He's using his own story to raise awareness about the importance of being an organ donor.

I'm so thankful to both my donors.

I they both are deceased donors.

I didn't have living donors, and I can't can't thank them enough.

Thanks to the gift of life, donor program, Seidick has been able to raise three boys and follow a career he loves in golf.

I have three children.

They would not be here without my two transplants.

And they'll have kids and they'll be part of society and keep giving back and giving back.

It keeps on going, and I think I'm living proof of that.

Mike is rather unique in how long he's been out.

He was at the very early stages of transplantation, but hopefully we're creating more and more of those stories every day.

And more recipients like Mike are are benefiting each year.

Gift of Life president Rick Hasz says one organ donor can help up to eight people and a tissue donor can help more than 100.

Being an organ donor is really one of the last acts of human kindness that you can really do after you die.

A Gift of Life is the organ procurement organization for Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and the state of Delaware.

We're responsible really for the shepherding of families.

Once they lose a loved one, talking to them about that opportunity for donation and then coordinating the gifts so that they get to the appropriate transplant recipients.

Hasz says this area led the country last year with 705 organ donors providing over 1700 transplants.

But there's more work to be done.

We still have over 5000 patients in our area waiting for a transplant And if you look at that number nationally, there's over a hundred thousand people waiting for a transplant.

One name gets added to the list every 20 minutes.

Those looking to become a donor can do so when getting or renewing a driver's license.

Hasz says it's easy.

All it takes for those interested is to check a box to opt in.

That check can mean life or death for those waiting for a transplant.

Saving someone's life.

It's it's the best thing you can do at the end of your life is to save someone.

They will remember you forever.

Statistics show about 17 people die each day waiting for an organ.

Although about 90% of adults in the US support organ donation, only 60% are actually organ donors.

That will do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney.

Hoping you stay happy and healthy.