國家地理:移植的臉如何改變了一名女子的生活(12)
They saw the donor's face every day, but she remained a mystery to the Stubblefields. They knew her age, but they didn't know her name, or how she died, or how she lived. Katie thought about her and her family often.
他們每天都能看到捐贈者的臉，但它對斯圖布爾菲爾德全家來說仍然是個謎。他們知道捐贈者的年齡，但不知道她的名字，不知道她是怎么死的，也不知道她是怎么生活的。凱蒂經常想起捐贈者及其家人。
She was the third donor found in the time Katie waited for a face. Twice a donor had been identified and the clinic had alerted the Stubblefields. Twice the donors hadn't worked out. For patients waiting for an internal organ, the only match requirements are compatible size, blood type, and, for some organs, tissue type. With faces, the sex must match, the skin tone must be similar, and the age must be reasonably close. That, along with the need to find a donor fairly nearby, means the pool is much smaller. Katie's youth made it even smaller.
她是在凱蒂等臉的時候發(fā)現的第三個捐獻者。此前兩次，診所發(fā)現捐贈者，同時通知斯圖布爾菲爾德家。但兩次捐贈都沒有成功。對于等待內臟器 官移植的病人，唯一的要求是器官大小、血型和某些器官組織類型是否相匹配。在臉部移植中，性別必須匹配，膚色必須相似，年齡必須相當接近。再加上需要在附近尋找捐贈者，意味著捐贈范圍也要小得多。凱蒂的年輕，使得器官匹配變得更難。
More than 120,000 people in the U.S. await organs of all kinds, but they're in short supply. On average, 20 patients die each day while waiting. Faces were added to the list of organs in the national transplant system in 2014; the wait is unpredictable. The pool of candidates is very small, and the family of the potential donor must give permission to use the face, even if the person had registered as an organ donor.
在美國，有超過12萬的人在等待各種各樣的器官移植，但它們卻供不應求。平均每天有20名患者在等待期間死亡。2014年，臉被列入國家移植系統器官名單，但等待是不可預測的。候選人的數量非常少，潛在捐贈者的家人也必須同意使用這張臉，即使這個人已經注冊為器官捐贈者。
Katie's doctors had said it was likely the donor would be someone who died from a drug overdose, given the opioid epidemic that has hit Ohio particularly hard. Nationwide, the epidemic has led to an increase in the number of available organs: A recent study found that the number of donors who died from drug overdoses jumped more than tenfold from 2000 to 2016. As it turned out, Katie's donor did die of an overdose, but opioids didn't kill her; cocaine did.
凱蒂的醫(yī)生說，由于俄亥俄州的阿片類藥物疫情尤為嚴重，很多人可能是由于藥物過量致死。在全國范圍內，這種流行病導致了可用器官數量的增加。最近的一項研究發(fā)現，從2000年到2016年，死于藥物過量的捐贈者數量增加了十倍以上。事實證明，凱蒂的捐贈者確實死于藥物過量，但阿片類藥物并沒有殺死她，導致其死亡的是可卡因。
