Gratitude for life

A few days ago, I got a call at 2:39 a.m.

Earlier that week, a 17-year old girl in western Pennsylvania had just woken up in the morning, and must have been getting ready for school, when she suddenly had a bad asthma attack and couldn’t breathe. She collapsed, and her parents called 911 and started CPR. When paramedics arrived, they performed an emergency intubation.

It wasn’t enough.

After about 15 minutes without oxygen, the girl’s brain had suffered irreversible damage. She was hooked up to life support machines at a hospital which kept her organs alive, but after a few days of tests, it was clear she wasn’t going to recover, and she was officially declared brain-dead.

Which is why I got the call. “Would you like an ovary?”, the caller asked.

I wonder what this person was like. On the donation forms, I learned her age, BMI, pulse, blood pressure, and a myriad of other test results. But I don’t know what her dreams were. And now, she’ll never get to achieve them.

Sometimes I feel like life is overwhelming. But at the end of the day, I’m lucky to be alive. And I’m immensely grateful for organ donors and their families who choose to save the lives of others and support research, turning tragedy into hope.

I believe in the power of technology to improve the world and prevent human suffering. I dream that one day, there will be no more organ donations, both because not enough people will be dying, and because we’ll be able to grow new organs on demand. Until then, we’ll do our best, and remember those who we couldn’t save.