I've been thinking a lot lately about organ tranplants and organ donation. This has come up mostly because my sister-in-law, who I mentioned briefly in this post, is needing a lung transplant.
At the end of last year my sister-in-law was in the hospital for a week and consequently because of the issues that she was dealing with then had a decline in her health. She's had major health issues for ten plus years (Dare I say pushing 15 years? I've known her for eight of those years) and in her own words says that her 'body is a maze' and sometimes it takes the doctors a while to figure out what is going on and how best to help her.
Earlier this year, after her hospital stay and health decline her doctors highly recommended she have a lung transplant. She told everyone in my family this news about six weeks ago. Since she told us she has has the transplant evaluation and the doctors have definitely said this is the way to go in order for her to be healthy and stable. As well, the doctors have said she needs to be on the transplant list as soon as feasibly possible.
I'll be honest, I know 'this much' about organ transplants -- which is to say, almost nothing. Until about six weeks ago my knowledge was, 'People have transplants. I know it's a thing, I just don't know anything about them.'
I have learned a little more recently. More details about what a transplant entails, more about the caregiving post-transplant, the medications, dressing changes. My brother and his family will need a lot of help during the transplant time and post-transplant. I've learned that organ transplants are no joke and that people don't get them just for fun. Please hear me, it's not like I thought people got them for fun before this, but my eyes have been opened to the seriousness of them. My knowledge was very limited before and now it has been expanded.
And I've been hit by the reality that in order to even have a organ transplant, you first need to have an organ donor.
Which means, someone has to die (In many situations. Not all. But hear me out on this).
It's a weird thought...that in order to keep one person from dying, another person has to die.
And not only does someone have to die, the person that has recently passed had to make a conscious choice while they were alive to even be a donor in the first place.
It's a choice; I will give up an actual physical part of me once I no longer have need of it.
When I was sixteen I got my driver's license. My parents told me beforehand that when I got my license the person issuing the license would ask if I wanted to be an organ donor. People, my sixteen year old self debated this a lot leading up to my driver's test. Did I want to be an organ donor? Did I want to be an organ donor? Should I be a donor? It was a decision that I kept thinking about over and over and over. When the time came I barely understood the question when I was asked. What I recall from that moment was the person asked briefly, 'Do you want to be a donor?' and the word, 'No' came out of my mouth before my brain could process what they were actually asking. The deed was done, I thought. I said no.
I'm not a medical person. Meaning, one, I'm not a medical professional and two, there is a reason I am not a medical professional and have absolutely no desire to be one. I don't even like hospital dramas. The medical field has almost no interest in it for me. Oh, our bodies are fascinating, and I do enjoy learning about them to a point, but surgery? Blood? Needles? Cut me open? Lose an organ? Uh, yeah, no thanks. So me thinking about being an organ donor, even after I'm gone and someone cutting me open, gives me the shudders.
My sister-in-law in a brave woman. But I know, and she knows and my family knows, that she has to have this done. She is not doing it necessarily because it is her idea of a good time, she's doing it because for her it is, quite simply, a necessity.
My dad was an organ donor. My cousin who passed was an organ donor. My dad was able to give skin tissue. My cousin was able to give her eyes to someone who needed to see. Both my dad and my cousin were sick when they died, so they couldn't donate a major organ, yet they donated what they could.
As I've been processing the idea of organ donation the past few weeks I had a thought that was new to me. Being a donor means that a physical part of you is still left alive on earth. Someone in this world has my dad's skin tissue. Someone in this world has my cousin's eyes. A physical part of them lives on in someone else. It's weird to think about, but also really, really beautiful.
And what if the person who received my dad's skin tissue was able to donate their skin tissue after they pass? Then a physical part of my dad will live on in someone else again, even longer (Now I don't know if that is a thing, but possibly?!?).
Someone's lungs will live on in my sister-in-law. And as my family rejoices because she has a chance for a longer life, another family is mourning because a loved one has gone.
I see the spiritual element in all this too. One person dying so another person can live. Jesus giving his life so we can have life.
My license is due for renewal this fall. I am rethinking the 'no' that I gave so many years ago.
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