Ten years ago today, a beautiful, thoughtful, kind, compassionate, seventeen-year-old girl died. It was completely unexpected – a bleed, near her brain, on the day before her junior prom. It was completely unexpected – except, maybe, to her…
One of her friends told me that, in the months before she passed, Kari seemed to make amends with a number of friends where there may have been unresolved issues… Another of her friends wrote, in a poem that I still read regularly, “I think you knew that God was calling you home… Could you hear Him calling your name?”
In their first letter to me, her family told me that a month before she died, at the supper table, she told them how strongly she felt about organ donation. A few weeks later, she reminded them in a discussion with her sister…
Ten years ago tomorrow I got a call at around Noon, telling me that, if everything went as they hoped, my surgery would be scheduled for around 10:00pm… It was my fifth call for lungs, but something felt different about this call... Or maybe that was because I was beginning to feel I just didn't have that much time left.
During the 31 months I waited on the list, I remember saying my prayers in bed every night before I slept – connected to oxygen tanks, lying next to Laura and thinking about how she stood by me and cared for me all of these years – and how she watched me go downhill for thirteen years. I didn’t want to leave her now – at my very bottom – at my very worst… Every night I prayed for my donor and their family – I prayed that my future donor was enjoying their life, and getting done what they needed to get done… And I prayed my donor’s family would be comforted – and given the strength and compassion to give a gift. And I prayed that I had the strength to survive – and afterwards, that I would, maybe, have one good year to enjoy with Laura… And if I had to die after that year, I could at least leave her with some good memories – and leave on a little higher note…
This week I will have had 10 years – 10 of the most amazing years of the 50 that I’ve lived… I tell almost everyone I meet about the girl who saved my life… And a band of piccolos could not strike a higher note than Kari and her family struck for me…
I cannot imagine the hurt of having a daughter or sister pass away… I even have trouble imagining losing a close friend. I have cystic fibrosis – I was the one that everyone else was supposed to lose – I always knew that… Kari and her family are the reason I’m still here. I never knew Kari, but often enough I know how much it hurts me that she’s gone – so I cannot imagine what it’s like for her family, or her friends and all of the people who loved her…
I didn’t know about Kari until almost two years after I began breathing with her lungs – that was when I got a letter from her family, and pictures – showing me the smile I’d felt since I started my new life… About a year after that, we met her Mom & Dad, her Sister & Brother-in-law, her boyfriend and a few of her close friends, and Sandy & Rog – Sandy has Kari’s heart…
In the years after that, I’ve met so many of her friends: Alex, Nick, Ryan, Nicole, Abby, Jenn, Kathryn, Erin, Brett, Christian, Katie, Wendy, Tessa, Kelly, Samara, Nicole, Alanna, Laura, Alisha, Alicia, Carly – I’ve hugged almost all of them… A number of them come out to climb the Hancock with me… A few of them I know only through email or facebook. I see Kari in their smiles – I feel her in their hugs… (If I missed someone – I’m so sorry – sometimes you’re in my heart more than in my post-transplant-drug-marinated brain…)
Some of us get a second chance at life – we live a “normal” life, sometimes well into adulthood before we experience an illness leading to organ failure – we would have died without a transplant – and the gift we’ve received adds years to our life to spend with our families and the people we love – but we also deal with being more compromised by the drugs and issues that come along with transplant – and we’re not quite as able as we were before our illness… But some of us get so much more than a “second chance” at life – I’d had bad lungs for almost 40 years and over the last 10 years with those bad lungs, they were doing their bestest to kill me… After living almost 40 years with lousy, cystic fibrosis lungs – breathing with the gift Kari gave me blows my freakin’ mind every single day. I woke up from surgery 10 years ago, two days from today – I vividly remember looking up at a monitor a few hours later, breathing room air, and seeing my O2 saturation at 95 – and I remember starting to cry… That was the first day – there have been 3,650 days since that day and her gift has amazed me every single one of those days.
Ten years ago today, a beautiful, thoughtful, kind, compassionate, seventeen-year-old girl died… She’s given me so much more than lungs.
This is National Donate Life Month. I hope that you can sense how I feel about Kari – and how Melissa feels about Chloe… Whether we know them or not, this is how most of us recipients and our families feel about the donors and families who save our lives… I hope that when you think about how I feel about Kari, you consider, perhaps, that it would be neat if someone felt that way about you ten years after you’ve left this planet – that someone struts around in clothing emblazoned with your home state, just for the chance to be able to tell another person about you – that someone has your smile on their mind always.
Please consider organ and tissue donation – tell your family how you feel, and sign your state’s donor registry. I know a beautiful girl from Iowa who knew how she felt, and she told her family… I think about her every single day…
Other state’s Donor Registries
