What A Life! #FTSF #SoCS

“What a life!” my oma would always say with a sigh.

She was right. I say it now, that line, in exasperation, and in my memory of her, to honour her unique brand of wisdom and her straightforward ability to speak the truth.

I just had a checkup with a nurse practitioner. She was very thorough and we talked for what felt like a very long time. No rush to see me briefly and get me out the door. No neglect of what I needed. I told her my entire history, as fast as I possibly could, but she did not want me to hurry through the details. She was wonderful.

It takes me a little while to get through my somewhat complex medical history. I had her curious and eager to look up my eye condition

and the rare syndrome I share with my brother.

This took me back, which it can most often do, and required that I look back over the years.

Mostly I spoke of how sick I was before my then gp finally diagnosed my end-stage kidney failure at age twelve. That sure took me back, into the bad and the worse in terms of memories and recollections. I told her how hard it becomes to remember to include all necessary details, with every retelling I give a doctor or nurse. She was very understanding.

I see how far I’ve come when I look back, using my medical story as the example. I reflect on the girl I was and the struggles in the following years. I want to think I am doing alright considering. I think of my oma and I leave my medical checkup and I sigh.

When it comes to the years, I do so much looking back that it is sometimes a heavy weight on my shoulders.

I like the romantic notion of the days of yore. I read such fairy tales, but life is never like those stories in literature in reality. People reminisce about how it used to be, but perhaps, just perhaps they are remembering a time that never actually existed.

That may come across, to you, if you’re only just hearing me for the first time, as a highly pessimistic slant to life. Perhaps. Your take on, say the last twenty years of your own life, it could very well be all rosy coloured and tinted through different glasses. I haven’t worn glasses since 1996 I’m afraid.

No self pity here, but my life isn’t now or never has been a fairy tale anyway. Just the sort of telling it like it is/was, just like my oma used to like to do. That’s about as stream of consciousness as I can get today.

There is thankfulness to be had here, (which will for sure include that wonderful nurse), of course, but that is still to come in my next post.

🙂

I’m doing a double linkup this weekend, starting with

Finding Ninee’s Finish The Sentence Friday,

followed by

Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

Pieces of Me, #FTSF

The truth is, my left eye is artificial. a rod fuses my spine, keeping the curve of scoliosis at bay. My father’s kidney sits on my right side, at the front of my body, in my abdomen.

I sometimes feel like more others and other things, than I do myself.

How I grew up to be the one I am now…well, I acquired all these things along the way, making me stronger, propelling me forward.

What is artificial and what what is real?

I became who I am, with those materials and those extra, needed transplanted body parts.

It sometimes feels like I am part of some science fiction story.

I am who I am today because of all of this, but not without those people and the memories we’ve made together.

Right now, pieces of me are being kept safe, within boxes and boxes of old cassette tapes, a passing fad it seems, but even vinyl has made a comeback, so who knows what could very well come back around again one day.

On those tapes I was becoming me all those years, with the help of my family, my friends, and my doctors. They saved me, my very life, on more than one or two or a dozen occasions.

When I grew up, I knew…well, I’m still growing. Up and up and up I go. Up and back down again, as life often happens.

But as long as I have my father’s kidney (working well and taking me straight to breaking records for longest renal transplant) – nineteen years, on June 5th!

As long as I have my artificial eye where it’s supposed to be and my spine held straight, thanks to the hardware that keeps me from curving and twisting.

As long as I have my family behind me, supporting me, in whatever I do.

As long as there now exists digitized copies of those memories from childhood and the life that gave me…its best shot at stability.

Then I will be here to finish another sentence with all of you next week.

Another excellent one, with

Finding Ninee and her journey as a special needs parent

and this week’s FTSF sentence producer,

Life Through My Bioscope.

Uneasy Me, #FTSF

“It’s not easy to be me.”

Superman’s Dead (It’s Not Easy) – Five For Fighting

Superman was always one of the last of the superhero stories I would choose. I was always more of a Batman girl. I don’t know how many Superman films I watched there for a while, but none of them stuck with me as being particularly interesting. I didn’t understand the whole backstory or even the definition or importance of kryptonite.

That’s why, when I read this week’s FTSF prompt, I froze in my tracks, unsure if I would write anything at all, have anything to link up with.

I looked up the meaning, refreshed my memory, but still drew a blank. Kryptonite meaning, basically, weakness and still I was coming up with nothing.

Come on, I nudged myself over the last few days. You’ve got to have a weakness. What is it? What would be the main one?

I am working on writing my memoir. It seemed like a perfect moment in time to start again, as I think back on the twenty years, exactly, that I was diagnosed with kidney disease as a frightened twelve-year-old.

Since that point I have been called brave and inspirational many many times. How did I do it? How was it that I managed to survive feeling so sick, dialysis, and surgery to have a transplanted kidney from my father?

I am not as strong as all those well-meaning family, friends, medical professionals, and acquaintances assumed. I don’t want what happened twenty years ago, what was only really a few years out of my whole life, to define me forever. I try to get past it, really, but I keep going back to it and writing my story down is a big part of that.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s even a good idea. Maybe I should just move on and look ahead. That’s what I am doing, but then I turn my head round and admit to myself that what happened during those rough months, all those years ago now, that stuff left its mark on me and I can’t honestly say I don’t look back in reflection.

My kryptonite is the past. It’s the affect a physical illness had on my body, my mind, the girl I was trying to grow into.

It influences my body image even now, as a grown woman.

When I was treated I was clearly under-weight and malnourished. I was lacking proper vitamins and minerals, things the kidneys are supposed to take care of.

I stayed stable on dialysis and I had the transplant. This got me back to a healthy state, but I went from being barely eighty pounds, maybe less, at age twelve. My puberty was hugely disrupted. I was not growing.

Once I had a working kidney, one being all you technically require, I began to gain weight. I gained weight as a side effect of more than one of the medications I had to go on.

I remember standing on our bathroom scale, realizing I was ninety-two pounds, and starting to panic. I wasn’t relieved I was gaining. I was horrified.

I was weighed every time I went on and off the dialysis machines. This was necessary, to monitor my fluid loss and gain, but it played havoc with my head. I was shown to focus on weight, at a time I shouldn’t have had to, when only months before I was pushed to put on the pounds.

Now, the weight was coming on abnormally quickly and I was visited by dieticians who went over the list of foods to stay away from if I didn’t want to gain even more weight.

So now I like my chocolate but I also like my fruit.

At Easter I love chocolate eggs, but come summer I go nuts eating strawberries, peas straight from the pod, peaches, and apples for weeks and weeks on end. They are really all I want to eat.

All in moderation. Diets don’t work. Or avoid some foods entirely?

I can list all the excuses in the book as to why exercise and weight loss hasn’t been easy for me, but I know I am not alone. I must keep plugging away at it, remaining mindful of it. I don’t want to make excuses, to use chronic pain or my blindness as reasons why I am now gradually gaining weight over time. I only get my kidney checked twice a year, but they still take my weight at the start of these appointments, and I am forced to look back and try to recall what the scale read six months before, to keep track, somewhat, of where I’m at. So although I don’t keep checking my weight on my bathroom scale every morning, I’m made to be accountable, every time November/April rolls around.

Yes, the meds have decreased, things are more moderate now, but the damage is done – floodgates have been wide open for twenty years. I deal with something so many people deal with, I know. Emotions also play a part and my psychological state becomes a factor.

Can I keep things under control? Can I not let the events of my past rule my present or influence the future?

My kryptonite are the stretch marks I’ve had (not from a pregnancy, like most women my age), but since I was on high doses of prednisone, when I was fourteen years old. I can feel the clear visible evidence of how it all began and I feel weak because I can’t keep things in balance as much of the time as I’d like, but that’s why I write about it all. I hope that part doesn’t make me weak. I don’t feel all that brave or inspirational and I don’t want the weaknesses I live with to bring me down. They do serve as reminders of the scars of my past and the toughness, as they’ve driven these bits of my past in deep.

Now I’m off to go eat a mango and some chocolate.

🙂

The brains behind this week’s FTSF is

Lisa Crisp Witherspoon

of The Golden Spoons.

Kryptonite – 3 Doors Down

And, as always, Kristi of

Finding Ninee.

TToT: Do Or Die – Mercy! #10Thankful

“Writing and reading to me is synonymous with existing.”
–Gertrude Stein

What a difference a week can make.

Last week was the perfect autumn weather and this week all I keep hearing about is snow.

Last weekend the Toronto Blue Jays were not expected to be in the game for much longer and this week they still have a chance.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

I seem to remember something about a book of rules for the TToT and there’s one of those for baseball, not that I understand it, but more about that later.

It was a difficult week, in some respects, but only because I am finally putting myself out there, my writing and myself, and receiving feedback. This translates into criticism and that can be difficult to take sometimes. Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.

Ten Things of Thankful:

For my immune system.

Mine works for me. Okay, so I may be singing a different tune come the middle of winter, but at the moment I think all’s well.

I have been around several sick friends and family in the past month and I just assumed I would catch their colds, etc.

I haven’t. I have a lower immune system, as a transplant recipient, and it can seem to permit multiple colds each winter, every year, but it is unpredictable. I can’t predict when or if I’m going to get a cold.

I am visiting a friend in Toronto tomorrow and her niece is there recovering from a bone marrow transplant. As long as I don’t jinx myself and come down with something in the next twenty-four hours, I will be happy and thankful. Not to mention, my immune system hasn’t decided to completely attack my father’s kidney, in nearly twenty years, so that’s something to be grateful for.

For a delicious cup of coffee, some relaxing Lorde inspired tunes, and a couple of hours at the salon.

Portishead

The coffee and the half hour I sat there, listening to music playing and the hustle and bustle of my cousin’s salon, while my hair had foils in it and waiting for the dye to do its thing made for a most relaxing break.

For the chance to feel like I was dressed up and with somewhere to go for the evening.

For the deliciousness that is movie popcorn.

Who’s with me?

For a totally eye-opening documentary experience.

“Our voices are our most powerful weapons.”

I went to see He Named Me Malala and I found it to be every bit as inspiring and moving and sweet and real as I thought it would be.

This film needed to be made and it needs to be seen around the world. It makes me cry, but it forces me to be thankful.

For the game that kept Toronto in the running, for the first time in over twenty years.

It was a real rush to know that we had little chance, at that point, but that I never lost faith. It ended up being one for the record books, and I don’t pretend to understand all the little ins and outs of the game and its rules, but I know the tension and the energy felt, sitting there watching.

We were losing two games in a five game series. Nobody thought we would go on to win the next three, but I believed.

What is it about rooting for one’s sports team that can cause such strong feelings and stress?

For my white cane.

October 15th was White Cane Day or White Cane Safety Day. I feel like a lot of these days are more US based, a lot of the times, but it doesn’t really matter where or what day.

I will admit that I have had my battles with the white cane. I have truthfully felt embarrassed about it, like a little brother or sister, always tagging along, but being forced by a parent to let them join in the fun.

Yeah, I’m working on getting over my issues because without it, I would be in more danger and would have been left without the means to get somewhere, anywhere, unable to see my surroundings well enough. I can’t deny the importance it has played and must play to me in future.

For my first Internet radio show interview.

Traveling With the Speed of Sight

I think I’ll stick with writing my blog, but it never hurts to try something new.

For you never knows’.

I did not expect a lot of people to listen to that interview, honestly, but all it takes is one.

One of the writer/editor friends I’ve made online and on Facebook just happened to be listening and immediately messaged me after the interview ended.

I admire her and her work so much and her online publication is at the top of my list of places I am determined to see my writing on.

Full Grown People

For the good and the bad that comes from putting myself out there.

Sure, this week I received some hard to hear criticism, but I also received some personal invites to submit my writing and to do more guest posts.

This, to me, would be considered a week of triumphs.

The Canadian federal election tomorrow could be the change we need, but there is a bit of a clash of events happening.

Elections Canada vs Jays Fans On October 19

Oh, don’t we Canadians have problems in our country?

😉

At least we’re aware of the issues that are important to us and as long as we know our priorities, right?

Mercy Mercy Me

I’ve been inspired, again this week, to not be silent, in whatever way that might be.

I love the female voices I’m hearing lately: both young and old.

Do I look scared to you?

You tell em Hazel!

“There’s a moment when you have to choose whether to be silent or to stand up.”
–Malala Yousafzai

Patience With Public Perception

Last time, on the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,http://rosebfischer.com/2014/07/15/the-redefining-disability-awareness-challenge/

I wrote about my diagnosis of kidney disease:

The D Word!

Here’s today’s question.

***

Q: How has public perception of disability changed in your lifetime?

A: Okay, so I will try my best to look at this question with an optimistic viewpoint, as much as possible – because although progression doesn’t happen as quickly as I’d like it to, it does happen.

I don’t know if so-called “public perception” has changed all that much really.

Yeah, the optimism is coming…just wait for it.

🙂

All I mean by that is that although conditions are hopefully improving, the question of what the public thinks, feels, or knows logically or through education are all different questions.

I was born in the 1980s and so not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. In that time, in the US there was the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which came on the scene six years after I was born.

Here in Canada, we have:

**The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

and

**The Canadian Human Rights Act

http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/about/

Disability is such a broad and all-encompassing term. It isn’t easy to lobby for every single disability out there.

http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/about/history

There’s a little thing called equal opportunities, which is becoming more commonly known in workplaces, but I still sense a lot of ignorance and discrimination, whether meaning it or not, by employers toward anyone with a disability:

I want to know my obligations. – Canadian Human Rights Commission

Right there!

The fact that the word “obligation” is used feels ugly. I read that and I already feel like I’m an obligation or a burden, just something mandated by the government and forced upon every unsuspecting company.

If so, well what’s wrong with that then?

I should be happy with that, right? The government is taking the necessary steps toward inclusion.

Laws may be the first step, but in many ways, they aren’t the most important one that will make the world a more inclusive place for everyone.

I believe terms such as “obligation” keep things just as focused on the negatives and downsides as my own negative tone of which I promise to keep adjusting.

I may come off sounding demanding and I am, but I am willing to do my part.

I am the first to admit that I am not always a patient person, like with this issue, but I also need to work on speaking up for myself and hopefully I can make it better for someone with a disability, thirty or fifty years from now.

Accommodations must be made, but until our world opens their minds and hearts and sees less differences, I fear this will never lead to the inclusion I dream of.

So what will it take to change the public’s perceptions fully?

Here’s a blog post my friend Steph, fashion and lifestyle blogger for women who are visually impaired wrote about that:

Observing 25 Years of the ADA – Bold Blind Beauty

I think Steph says something very wise in this post. She basically says that discrimination is everywhere, from people who don’t live with disabilities, but disability does not discriminate.

Sure, it’s easy to live in fear and denial. Believe me, I am extremely familiar with these things in my own life.

Fear keeps the public from wanting to take too close a look. If society keeps people with disabilities kept separate in their own schools and clubs and then, even worse, hidden away at home, they won’t have to deal with the fact that we do exist and deserve to have all the same opportunities for work and life.

However, the denial that goes along with this won’t protect them when disability comes into their own lives.

Laws are important and all well and good, but perceptions are a little more difficult to control this way.

You’d have to really get out there, to ask people what their true feelings are on disability, to follow them through their daily lives to see how they might react to certain situations.

I perceive myself one way, but I can’t control how other people will perceive me.

I will still continue trying to make strides in this arena though because it matters.

I do believe things have improved, in the thirty years since I was born – don’t get me wrong.

See, I can be optimistic. It’s just a little more complicated than that.

Sure, I get angry. I grow frustrated that the public just doesn’t understand, but I am very willing to keep the dialogue going.

Anger can work for you. It has propelled some of us in positive ways.

We do progress, as a species, even if we backslide now and again.

I do not downplay or discount all I have mentioned above, all that has been put in place since I was born thirty-one years ago. I even like to think it was, partly thanks to my appearance on the scene, that these leaps forward were made.

🙂

Too presumptuous? Okay, perhaps.

But in and amongst the frustration and the fear, I do have hope. Most people in the public are curious and kind. They don’t purposefully go out of their way to put up roadblocks for those of us with disabilities. It’s just that we need more than pity or good intentions. We need awareness and action.

I will admit, I’m not the first person to know all about public policies and government initiatives, but I do know about what it’s really like to live with a disability, in a world where I am in the minority.

The public does want to move beyond the fear and the denial; or at least, that is what I tell myself.

We must focus on what we can do, disabled or not, instead of what we can’t.

***

What can I do to help this process along? I ask you, the public!

Public…are you there?

(Crickets.)

🙂

Hmmm. Awkward!

Well, in the meantime…check out:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge on Facebook

And maybe fifty years from now we won’t need to have a Facebook page at all. Maybe disability won’t be such a big deal any longer. Or, maybe, awareness will always be a necessary and an important thing? What do you think?

Next week’s question is a variation on this weeks’:

How has your perception of disability changed in your lifetime?

Oh, how indeed.

The D Word

Here we are and we’ve arrive at the month of August and more

Redefining Disability awareness Challenge questions.

Last week I got my parent’s side of the diagnosis story and how it all began:

Diagnosis – Piece of Cake!

But I also mentioned, at the very end of the post, that I would be starting to look-back on the part I could remember.

***

Q: How has your life changed as a result of that diagnosis?

A: That diagnosis,

(LCA)

was my life, my normal and my reality. I don’t remember anything different.

So, as for how my life has “changed” – it hasn’t. It’s an ever-changing state of being, of course, but I do the best I can with the life I’ve been given.

That is why I’ve decided to move on with describing the diagnosis of subsequent conditions I can recall. This allows me to get a better sense of what my parents dealt with with me and my brother.

Of course, that was from the perspective of a parent. Every parent just wants to know that their child can and will have a happy and productive life. Once they educated themselves, all there was left was to take the steps they could to give us the best chance at that happiness.

This is why I made out as well as I did for the first several years of my life.

Education and socialization were issues to be faced and I was able to find success in both, to varying degrees.

I visited the eye doctor very rarely, as there was really no need. That may sound strange, but as a child I was healthy and I lived my life, like any other child.

My level of visual impairment was stable.

***

I felt the cool, smooth floor of the lounge/dining hall against my cheek. I don’t recall which camp activity we were engaged in, as to why I was lying on the floor in the first place, but this gave me the perfect opportunity to give into my exhaustion.

Nausea gripped me. I was eventually given some sort of children’s Tylenol.

All down the hall of my particular girl’s cabin I could hear friendly chatter and laughter, lots of fun to be had, but I wasn’t taking part.

I stayed in my room, in my bed, racked with the most painful of stomach cramps. I was away from home and I was afraid.

“Are you feeling sick?” asked an older girl.

“My stomach really hurts,” I replied.

“It’s okay you know,” she said, patting my arm reassuringly. “It’s normal. It’s what happens to girls around your age.”

She was referring to what I had learned about the year before, in health and sex ed. She assumed I was experiencing menstrual cramps.

I wasn’t. I hadn’t gotten my period and wouldn’t, for five more years. This was something else.

A few nights later I woke my roommate up, to the sound of me throwing up, on the carpet between our two single beds. She ran to get help from our cabin’s head counsellor.

I spent the final few days of camp, while the other children were out participating in the many sports and recreational activities, in my bed, in that cabin. They brought me broth and crackers.

This was the summer before my sixth grade year, before I would be diagnosed, before my parents would once more see their child diagnosed with an unwanted and unexpected condition.

My life would be forever changed. I would know what it was like to feel scared, ill, and uncertain of many things. I would suffer through more fatigue, stomach cramps, and general nausea. The diagnosis of kidney disease, to add on to the already present visual impairment would add a level of complexity that none of us were prepared for.

As I look back, that was the summer it all began, but had been going on even earlier, even as I was unaware of any problem.

Twenty years ago seems like such a long time, as I look back in reflection, and yet not. I can say I learned a lot about myself and how to appreciate life, from the age of eleven or twelve, of which I may not have learned otherwise. That, at least, is what being diagnosed with any of these things can offer in the way of positive life lessons.

***

The Facebook page is:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

For next week’s question:

How has public perception of disability changed in your lifetime?

I have been reading up on this issue lately and will be back to answer with my thoughts, next time.

Father

He holds me up. His strength and support have never let me fall far, for very long. On this Father’s Day I want to share a personal memory of my father, a perfect example of why my father is the best there is.

The day had been long and full of fun, but I was dead on my feet. We spent the day touring Toronto. Mom and Dad wanted to try and cheer me up, just days before the big surgery. We had to be in Toronto to check into Ronald McDonald House. I had to report to Sick Kids for some pre-transplant tests and one last dialysis run.

My three friends were allowed to come for the night. After spending the morning at the hospital the six of us went first up the CN Tower and to The Toronto Islands for the afternoon. We spent the day playing mini golf and riding the rides. It was a day none of us would ever forget.

By the end of it all we had the long walk, back from the ferry to Ronald McDonald House. I was hours away from receiving his kidney, in the hopes that I would get a whole new lease on life. I had been feeling unwell and weak for too long. The day, although fun and memorable, had been more than my fragile body could take. I simply couldn’t walk another step. There was no way I could make it all the way back, blocks and blocks through the Toronto streets.

He was about to undergo a major surgery, for me. He was taking a risk, for me. Of course, I was his daughter and there was never any question, and I will never forget it. However, it was something small, in comparison, that he did for me that day and of which I have never forgotten.

He picked me up when I could not continue. He put me on his back and carried me the rest of the way. As I wrapped my small arms around his shoulders and relaxed against his broad strong back, I was no longer exhausted beyond believe and I was no longer scared of the days to come. My father was my hero and my protector in every way in that moment. I have never felt safer or more secure and protected than I felt on that walk back to The Ronald McDonald House, early in June.

My father is the kind of father to take away my pain and make me comfortable. He would take all the risk and hold me up, anything so I could feel no fear. There’s nothing he would not do for me and he has proven that over and over again, until there is no doubt to be had.

Dad: I know I am safe when I have you in my corner. Thanks for always being there for me. I can only do you this small gesture and let others know about the strength you possess. If only all fathers were like you and no child was left to suffer – this would be a much better world.

Be A Donor

https://beadonor.ca

Just the other day I saw a news story about the province of Nova Scotia considering making organ donation upon death the norm unless a person specifically chooses to opt out. Canada is nowhere near the top of the list of countries with the highest organ donor rates in the world. Spain is on top and the US is ahead as well.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1292795/should-opting-in-for-organ-donation-be-automatic/

I know this is a complicated issue and I am sensitive to it, on both sides. I don’t have the easy answers here. I wish I did. Some say that proposed suggestion is a civil rights infringement. I can see where they are coming from, of course I can.

April is Organ and Tissue Donation Month and this past week was National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week
If you’re having a hard time keeping that all straight, you’re not alone. I find it difficult when just about every day, week, and month represent some organization or important cause of some kind. It’s definitely necessary, but with all the causes needing their own dates to help bring awareness to the issues, the calendar fills up quickly.

This is most important to me, obviously, because of how necessary organ donation has been for my family. I am determined to use this blog as a platform to discuss these things and to help spread the word. Without the internet and social media it wouldn’t be this easy for me to do. I can write, but it doesn’t help anybody if people don’t get the chance to read it.

I was used to the way we’d done it. As a child I didn’t think twice about my parent’s choices. Of course I was nervous for them when they went in for surgery, putting their lives at risk, small comparatively, but still present. I worried for them and held my breath until they were both out of surgery and recovered. Really though they were adults and I was the child. They were the parents. There was no question.

When it became reality, as an adult, that my baby brother (even if he was in his twenties) would be depending on the organ donor list the second time around, a whole new reality formed around the situation. I had no idea how I would handle the feelings and fears that go along with the transplant list.

The wait and the uncertainty were the first things, but that would fade away the moment I realized he was getting his chance.

It felt like ages, for him more than me, that he was on dialysis this time, but really it was only three years. I say only, but dialysis can become awfully tedious when it goes on day after day, month after month. For those who are on dialysis for extended periods of time, years and years, it becomes routine, just one more thing you do, like brushing your teeth, going to work or school, or cleaning the bathroom. Sure, it’s unpleasant, but the alternative is unimaginable.

This week will mark one year since the evening I received the call that they contacted him with a kidney. I was exhilarated and anxious and ready to rush off to London to be by his side.

When that call was almost immediately followed up by another to say it was a false alarm, the rush abruptly ended and we were back to waiting.

Within a few months it would happen for real. It went smoothly for the most part, and he has felt 100 percent better ever since.

What I wasn’t prepared for were those feelings of morbid curiosity and sadness for the people also involved, somewhere on the other side. They lost their loved one and would never get to see them again. I felt guilt for that and I felt guilt for feeling guilty. My brother was well again and that was the main thing. I didn’t have to know anything concrete about anyone or anything else. That’s just life I suppose and that’s what I now know firsthand makes these issues anything but black-and-white.

The reality is that people do die and we are able, with modern medical science, to help others in the face of those tragedies. Why wouldn’t we do what we could with that? I don’t know. All I know is that I love my brother and want him to be healthy. That’s the simplest answer I can come up with for the need for more donors. More families deserve a second chance. These issues are complex, staggeringly so. I want to make everyone aware of the reality of organ donation in the hopes of having a discussion. Life is precious, on both sides. I will never stop speaking my mind and telling my story when it comes to organ donation.

http://www.kidney.ca

http://www.giftoflife.on.ca/en/