Revive Hope

New Life Rises – 2010 Rose Parade…

At around 4:30am on New Year’s Day, 2010, Anne Gulotta will be hanging around in a hotel lobby with about 30 other people waiting for a bus… It will be the culmination of a week of meeting amazing people, attending galas and dinners, placing roses in a garden for special people, decorating a float, and so much more…

I met Annie five years ago… We were both calendar girls on the 2005 Gift of Hope calendar – I was Miss February because of the Hustle. She was Miss March… Annie lost her husband, Jay, in 2002 and Jay became a donor. It means so much to me to be around donor family members, and it means so much to me to try to help them understand the gifts they gave. After Annie and I shared our stories with one another – we decided that we would make a good speaking duo… We’ve done a lot of presentations together. I’m always so proud and honored to be speaking with her…

Beyond speaking – Annie has leapt tall buildings with me a number of times!!! And I got to celebrate with her after she met Jay’s kidney recipient, Julie. And later, I got to meet Julie and her husband too. I’ve posted here about Annie and Jay a few times, including last May.

She’s mentioned a few times that she wanted to be in the parade someday – ironically, I never really thought about it myself. I was asked to represent Gift of Hope last year. I quickly understood why she wanted to go… On Monday, Scott over at “I am. Are you?” announced that Annie will be representing Gift of Hope. I’m so tickled that she gets to ride the Donate Life Float this coming New Year’s!!!

I hope her experience is as wonderful as mine was last New Year’s Day, 2009, when I got to ride the float… I know it will be – I’ve already met so many of the people who organize this. They make magic happen. It was one of the most memorable times in my life – last December and January I had twenty Revive Hope posts describing some of the things that happened!

The theme of this year’s Donate Life Float is New Life Rises… The meaning is obvious to so many of us involved in organ donation… When people say “yes” to organ, eye and tissue donation, New Life Rises, giving hope and healing to those in need of life-saving transplants…

*From a bed of nurturing flames, the majestic phoenix rises anew, its tail feathers adorned with 40 floragraphs – portraits created with floral materials – depicting loved ones who gave life to those in need. The bird soars high above 24 float riders – all transplant recipients, living donors, and family members of deceased donors – seated along a monument inspired by the National Donor Memorial’s Wall of Names. A garden inspired by the memorial’s Wall of Tears leads the float with 2,000 dedicated roses, each carrying a personal message of love, gratitude and hope to a donor, recipient or candidate for transplant.

New life rose from Jay and Kari and Chloe and Chase and Dylan and Sam and Will and so many people we’ve talked about here… Annie is going to find out how special it can be to honor them, and all donors and recipients, in such a meaningful way.

* From the description at www.DonateLifeFloat.org

Heart Buddies

She made a big belly laugh when I told her she was a “mini-me.”  That’s right, she’s tiny but has a big heart under that little core.  Meet Kimberly, my heart buddy.  Just one organ saved her too!  And now her life is big.  She has big plans to participate in the transplant games in 2010, she is traveling overseas this fall and just last week she celebrated another birthday. 

Birthdays are a little more special now for her and for me and for Steve and Ted.  It means another year in good health, past, done, check.  For Kimberly, it meant writing her donor family who she thanks everyday.  A few sentences of her most recent letter go like this:

I am able to celebrate another birthday today because of the healthy heart beating my chest. Jonathan is able to celebrate another birthday because of the healthy lungs in his chest allowing him to breathe. Jonathan and I met today to celebrate our birthdays, which we would not otherwise be celebrating if it were not for the best gift anyone could receive - The Gift of Life because of organ donation.   Jonathan and Kimberly have the same donor and are pictured here. 

Things like birthdays, boat rides and lunch with a friend mean so much to Kimberly now.  It means another day here and a slight distraction from the world of a transplant recipient.  It means freedom from the hospital and the ability to breathe in fresh air.  She loves hot, humid days and won’t complain one bit if it’s summer until Halloween this year in Chicago.  Her story began at age 10 when her father was listed for a heart transplant and told that he had passed his cardiomyopathy onto his children.  It was the 70’s when only about 18 heart transplants were done per year and unfortunately, her father passed.  Kimberly wishes her father got his second chance at life because she says maybe then she would remember him a little more.  I feel though, her father saved his spot so that she and her brother, he was also effected could have their chance.  And they did, with their father watching over them from above.  Kimberly got the call on March 3, 2007.  There have been a few bumps along the way but today she walks faster than me!  Can you imagine the outpouring of support she and her family have given one another just to survive through the loss of one parent and the sickness of 2 other family members.  Only her sister and mother were spared from familial cardiomyopathy.  While her brother did get a second chance a life, he lost his fight 15 years after his heart transplant due to kidney failure and lymphoma.   In our lifetimes, Kimberly and I hope for better drugs and more donors.  We want everyone to feel the rush of life like we do now. 

We’re heart buddies now and forever.  We will meet even more buddies (like Jason, pictured here with us) as the days go one and our years in this elite club multiply.  Until then, we talk about her dating and my golfing and soon enough we will share the experience of the 2010 Transplant Games together.  We can’t wait! 

Open Hearted – Forever…

So… A little less than a year ago I got an email from a beautiful chick. She was congratulating me on being picked to ride the Donate Life Float in the Rose Parade, and telling me about her beautiful, new heart which she’d had for just over a year… And telling me to be on the look-out for 14 roses on the float that would be dedicated to her donor, Chloe…

Little did I know that, over the next year, she would tell me a little of her story for me to post here at Revive Hope in the form of a letter to her donor, Chloe – that had me crying as I posted it… That I personally would have the honor of placing her 14 roses in the Family Circle Garden on the float at the Rose Parade… That she would join my team and leap tall buildings with me, and climb the Hancock with me and Kari’s friends and so many more people… That we would both be in a video titled “I heart organ donors” for donor awareness month… And that she would join me and Jenn and Ted contributing to Revive Hope.

I can’t believe that I’ve known her for less than a year. It was September 3rd, last year that she sent me that email. She said she wanted to get involved in the cause of organ donation, and asked me for advice on how she might give back… It’s kinda neat when very special people walk into your life, and it feels like they’ve been there for years and years even when they’ve only been there for months…

A few months ago, Melissa celebrated her second year with Chloe’s beautiful heart. She’s touched a lot of lives, and influenced a lot of people over the past year. And like he did for me, Scott over at “I am. Are you?” saw the beauty in Melissa and Chloe’s story and he has again done something to let everyone else in the world see that beauty...

So please, grab a tissue, and check out Melissa’s letter to Chloe in the video Scott helped create, titled:

Open-Hearted – A Heart Recipient’s Letter to Her Organ Donor

To view a larger, clearer version – click on the video title above.

Brothers Celebrate Brother - Tri-ing for Life by Daryn Kagan

Her website says, “Welcome to DarynKagan.com! I hope you’ll visit each day to experience stories that make your heart go, “ZING!”

Last year, and again a few months ago, I wrote a few posts that I think show these guys in the way I’d like the world to see them. In August, 2008, when I met them at the Chicago Accenture Triathlon, my post was titled “Swim, Bike, Run, Chase.” When we went to cheer them on at the HyVee Triathlon in Des Moines last month, my post was titled, “Buck & Nancy’s boys… Chase’s Brothers.” If you hadn’t read them – check ‘em out… I’m kinda proud of them.

And along the same lines – here is a beautiful video about them on Daryn Kagan’s website titled “Tri-ing For Life, Brothers Celebrate Brother”… I think she did a pretty awesome job: