CLEVELAND -- She's performed in some of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, but since Christmas Eve, she's been waiting for her second double lung transplant at Cleveland Clinic.
The beautiful soprano sound Charity Tillemann-Dick's voice produces, comes from the lungs of an organ donor. Pulmonary Hypertension required the opera singer to undergo a double lung transplant in 2009.
Since then, she's performed globally and even found time to get married, but now her lungs are failing and she needs a second transplant.
In a motivational speech she once said, "Life isn't just about avoiding death is it? It's about living. Medical conditions don't negate the human condition and when people are allowed to pursue their passions doctors will find that they have better, happier and healthier patients."
If it wasn't for an organ donor, Charity might have been one of the 18 people who die daily waiting. Some 112,000 Americans are waiting for organ transplants and Charity's one of 138 in Ohio waiting for lungs.
Her sisters want to change the way people are asked to become organ donors.
"I would like to see people view organ donation as something that everyone does," says Mercina Tillemann-Dick, a pre-law student at Yale University.
She and sister, Glorianna, are trying to get legislation passed in their home state of Colorado to not only include information about organ donation on license applications, but also making donating automatic unless the person chooses to opt out.
"You always have the opportunity to opt out of the system. It's in no way a decision that's made for you. You make it for yourself," says Glorianna Tillemann-Dick, a history and philosophy major at Yale also.
According to Lifebanc CEO, Gordon Bowen, last year there were only eight thousand organ donors. Just because you agree to be one doesn't mean you'll become one.
"Of all the people that die in Ohio only about 1 to 2 percent meet the criteria to be an organ donor," Bowen says.
While most can donate tissue or eyes, organ donors must have suffered a head injury, be on a ventilator and declared brain dead. Someone who has a heart attack wouldn't qualify.
Bowen says other states have tried to pass presumed donor protocols before but so far none have passed.
"Do you want to gamble to say that other twenty percent that you missed versus an opt out system that people can put 'no' you may end up hurting yourself and making less donors here in Ohio," Bowen says.
Still, Charity and thousands of others continue to wait for a lifesaving gift.
About 56 percent of Ohioans are on the Ohio Donor Registry. Ohio is an "opt in" state. Lifebanc is hoping to get legislation passed here that once you agree to be an organ donor you're not asked the question each time you need to renew your license.
For more information on organ donation click HERE.
WKYC-TV
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