Tag Archives: organ donation

Mar 27 2012

i am hope

Today, Donate Life America featured Ashley’s story on Facebook and Twitter as part of their I Am Hope series, which is something they’re doing this week to raise awareness. And because organ donation is cool.

Neither of us knew this was happening, so it took me quite by surprise this morning when I checked my Twitter feed and read about my lovely fiancé. I clicked the link and found the news piece that aired last year when we participated in the sit-in at the local new station. At the time I looked for this video all over the place online. Though thankfully Mom had recorded it for us, I didn’t have a way to share it with all of you. But now I do!

So here it is. When you’re done, head over here and sign up to be an organ donor. You can’t even imagine how much the lives you save mean to someone else.

Jan 24 2012

less than a million breaths away

“I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s fear, the same basic fear that you and I have that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it…Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I…

And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what – a hundred years? two hundred? – and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished buy my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here…That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.”

That’s from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, and it hit me rather hard today whilst I was eating lunch alone upstairs at work. First it was the bit about the gravestones, which we think of as the final reminder of our footprints on our place. Then that bit about the slow fire drove it in. Maybe it was the events of last night – really thinking about the other side of organ donation – I don’t know. But when I read this today everything around ceased to matter, to even exist. And all I can think about now is how precious little time we get here, and how even by that measure I get even less precious little time to spend with Ashley…and that comes at the expense of some other family who ended up with even less precious little time with their child than they could ever have brought themselves to even try to imagine.

And I am sad for them. And yet grateful. And while those two emotions mix readily in a person’s heart, it takes the mind significantly more time to catch up.

Jan 23 2012

gifts

This evening Ashley and I were invited to a small gathering at a local university. A group of students had brought in someone to talk to them about organ donation, and she invited Ashley to tell her story.

I never tire of watching Ashley tell others about her transplant. She will tell her story to anyone who will listen. And she doesn’t tell it from a dramatic standpoint; it’s very matter-of-fact and informational. She’s not there to manipulate people into becoming organ-donors. She merely wants the facts of her story and her life to give people a real, live example of the gift that is organ donation.

Emphasis on the live.

But tonight was very different. Before Ashley talked, the family of a donor told their story. The mother cried a couple of times, but her message – that her son got the chance to be a hero, to literally save five lives – came through clearly. And it was a little difficult, to listen to her tell what is a lovely and sad story about her young son’s death, only to sit there next to someone who was there because of someone else’s similarly tragic death. Dylan’s mom even tearfully pointed out that the five people he saved would get to celebrate the birthdays and weddings that they now will never get to enjoy. And so to think about how we’re getting married in a few months was…unfair. To them.

I’ve spent so much time with Ashley, listening to her repeatedly talk about organ-donation as such a great thing – and it is – that somehow until tonight it never really sank in that someone had to die. I mean, academically, I was totally aware of that. But somewhere out there, a young girl’s parents sometimes cry because Ashley is going to have the wedding their daughter will never get.

And I don’t even know how to begin to thank them. Or really to even comes to terms with that.

It’s hard to know that the life you enjoy comes at the expense of someone else’s sorrow. I’m sure Ashley has been more than aware of that for nearly 4.5 years now. But I never really understood what that meant until tonight.

Apr 6 2011

donate life’s 24-hour sit-in, with news coverage including a live spot on ashley and yours truly on the eleven pm news.

As part of Organ Donation Awareness month, Donate Life and Life Connection of Ohio are doing 24-hour sit-ins all over the state. Yesterday, Ashley and I spent an hour in the green chair to help support that cause.

Our hour was during the 11 o’clock news, so they interviewed Ashley live. She did very, very well, even though I could see her hands shaking from nerves. The interviewer was one of the station’s evening anchors, a dude who Ashley finds incredibly cool and didn’t hesitate to tell him so.

But so anyway since we were on the 11PM news, we didn’t get to bed until roughly 0100h. And then had to get up at our usual time this morning. So I’m simply too tired to really post about it. I’ve tried like hell all day to find web video of our interview to no avail. Maybe another day. For today though, you get pictures.

Tomorrow I hope to have enough mind-energy to relate the full story and impressions, including the revelation that the weatherman I’ve gotten my weather info from since like age ten is a Paul-Rudd-esque type dude even though he seems mostly personality-less on air.

Journalistic secrets revealed! Interviews you see live on the air are basically re-hashes of earlier, behind-the-scenes interviews!

Ash and I chairing it up.

The live spot begins. You can't see my terror from this distance, but I assure you it's there.

Ashley answering questions. You know he's more awesome than Ron Burgundy by the lack of teleprompter. Also of note: I have a big fan.

Ashley with the other news anchor, who is actually every bit as sincere in person as I always suspected she was. The touching is probably not inappropriate.

  1. All images are probably property of Life Connection of Ohio and were downloaded from their Facebook page.
Mar 29 2011

the chair

Beginning at 10:30 this evening,(1) Ashley and I will be spending an hour in a chair.

This isn’t just any chair. This chair has a point: to never be empty.

The reason this chair is never to be empty is that each person who sits in it represents someone who has or can benefit from the wonder that is organ transplantation.

So, for an hour this evening, Ashley and I will represent two people whose lives have been enriched by this medical miracle as part of Life Connection of Ohio’s 24-hour sit-in. The event will happen at one of the local news stations and given that we’ll be there during the 11PM news, there’s a chance that we’ll end up on tv.(2)

I’ll use this event today to remind you all that organ donation saves lives. But more so, it enriches lives. If you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please consider doing so. I’ve written already about why being an organ donor is awesome, and if that doesn’t convince you can check out the information on the Donate Life website. There are a LOT of misconceptions w/r/t organ donation, so please don’t write it off without researching the accuracy of your particular objection, if you have one.

I’m sure I’ll be tweeting from the chair later tonight, so feel free to tune in!

  1. UPDATE: So it turns out I’ve got my weeks all turned around and this whole chair this is supposed to happen next Tuesday. I’m not really sure how I’ve managed to get this one wrong, but, well, there you have it. My bad.
  2. The temptation to do something ridiculous or to maybe make-out on live tv is something I’m hoping to get over sometime pre-2230h.
Nov 9 2009

legos

lego

from xkcd.

Organ donation saved Ashley’s life just over two years ago after a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis left her with less than 15% lung capacity in one lung. This idea, that we’re all like Lego(1) pieces that can be mixed and matched, is the most honest analogy I’ve ever heard in favor of organ donation.

Wanna be an organ donor? Go here.(2)

  1. Lego is a registered trademark of Lego Group, a private, family-owned company based in Billund, Denmark.
  2. No seedy motel bathtubs filled with ice involved.
Oct 21 2009

perfectly logical reasons why you should probably be an organ donor

  1. It’s the only scientifically viable way to go on living after death.(1)

    2. No bathtubs-filled-with-ice involved

    No bathtubs-filled-with-ice involved

  2. If you do become a zombie, you won’t have as much dead weight to haul around as your fellow undead. You’ll be faster, which means more brains for you!(2)

  3. You could save the lives of eight others. If you include their families, extended families and friends, it means that you can call in tons of favors in the afterlife. You’ll never again have to get up to get your own beer.

  4. Without some type of anime-inspired prosthesis, it’s the only way you’ll ever be inside eight people at once.

  5. Some transplant recipients have claimed that they have random cravings for food they’ve never even liked before. So, finally, there will be someone else on the planet who enjoys peanut-butter-and-sweet-pickle sandwiches as much as you do.

  6. Recipients also sometimes write letters of thanks to the donor’s family, and it’s always nice to get things in the mail besides bills, fliers, overdue notices and autumn leaves.(3)

  7. Also, some recipients have dreams of people they don’t know. There’s another term we use to describe the splitting of a person’s consciousness into many others: army of minions!

  8. If your consciousness does split into eight other people, imagine all the showers you’ll get to voyeur.

  9. The ruling deity of your religion will look at it as your final act of compassion. That should totally make up for that time in eighth grade when you touched yourself inappropriately.(4)

  10. It’s the only medical procedure you can get for free. Why not stick it to the man once last time?

  11. They’ll pack your organs into coolers filled with ice. And that is just sweet as hell.

  12. The recipient will have cool scars. He or she will tell others about the scars, and you’ll get to be part of a cool story.

  13. You will give the gift of life without getting knocked up or knocking someone up. Without morning sickness. Without back pain. Without leaking breasts and raging hormones. Without midnight cravings and constant uterine pressure. Without having to pee every six seconds.

  14. You will be loved by many, many people, not just because you died, but because you chose to go on living.
  1. Zombification, of course, is still on the outer fringes of modern science.
  2. Assuming, of course, you become a zombie after you’re dead.
  3. Though the leaves are nice.
  4. And that other time in eighth grade. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time. And that other time…right up until that time not long before you died.