There’s no particular reason for the picture of the cat. Other than I like it. This is our Jacques. Laura sometimes thinks it’s funny to put a banana sticker on his forehead. Laura’s kinda weird that way. Jacques doesn’t seem to see the humor, at least not in this particular shot.
My first three represents quite an achievement… Actually, it’s three-point-five-million… Donate Life Illinois and Gift of Hope and the Illinois Secretary of State achieved their goal of adding 3,500,000 Illinois residents to the states new organ & tissue registry since the new registry was initiated in January 2006…
There were hundreds, if not thousands of people who helped make this happen… There were school drives, and workplace drives, and neighborhood drives, and blogging drives, and a big, lovable, pink liver was involved as well…
I’ve been to a few of these drives – I’ve met so many people at them… They are amazing and passionate, and dedicated… They are recipients and donor families, and families and friends of recipients and donor families or people waiting… Many of them are just people who believe that this is the right thing to do, and support this cause. They're helping people understand how special and precious organ donation truly is... I love meeting them – and I love thanking them. I’m alive because of people like them, and I like to remind them of that too…
I know a lot of people waiting like I was waiting eight years ago… Those I know are mostly waiting for lungs, but I know folks waiting for other organs too… I know a lot more of them are going to be alive because of this effort. I know the next effort is to get to 5 million, but I’m so proud of all of the folks who have been involved in this achievement. Thank you.
My buddy Scott, over at IamAreYou wrote a wonderful blog about Illinois surpassing 3.5 million…
Onto another three… Three thousand…
I think that I have the obligation to celebrate more than just my birthday … I think I’m kinda entitled to celebrate the month. And should they be two months back-to-back, I think I’m entitled to a quarter… My birthday is April 12th… My “re-birthday”, when I got my beautiful lungs, is April 8th… Kari’s birthday is March 7th – my beautiful lungs turned 25 on March 7th… Since the Hustle is in February, my “birthday quarter” is February through April. But sometimes I change it to March through May, midstream, should I want to continue celebrating.
On the morning of June 1st, Laura wagged her finger at me and told me my “birthday season” was OVER – this is the beginning of her birthday month! Her birthday was yesterday. Ironically, a few months ago someone else was noting how many days it had been since they were transplanted – some of us keep a running total in our minds, and in our hearts... I put my days in a spreadsheet and checked out how many days I’d had my lungs… Then, looking for a round number, I took it to the next natural step… Turns out yesterday has also been 3,000 days since I received my beautiful lungs… When she was wagging her finger at me on June 1st, I just had to tell her, “Well actually…” (I thought she was going to get whiplash the way she rolled her eyes…)
Laura turned ** yesterday. THAT was the birthday we celebrated… But I celebrated that birthday with Laura because of Kari. 3,000 days ago her gift was delivered to me… It seems like yesterday, yet it seems like forever… I didn’t learn of her for almost two years after that day – but I know I’ve felt her smile for 3,000 days…
