Thursday 8 July 2010

Beautiful summer days are all too fleeting for some...

It's a really warm night and it's late. It's meant to be 30 degrees tomorrow and it reminds me of a summer in my early teenage years when the grass was burnt yellow during the whole school holidays, pricking the soles of your feet if you walked barefoot.

Long days of afternoon headaches brought on from drinking beers in the park with good mates, itching skin from too much sunshine with only a cloying smell to prove you bothered with suntan lotion at all.

Summer full of possibilities.

And yet at the back of your mind, as you pack your days full of heat, rarely indoors outside of work hours, you know it'll end. The English summer is so fleeting, days darken, the breeze picks up, the sandals go to the back of the wardrobe.

It's National Transplant week this week. There are currently about 8,000 people waiting on the transplant list. Three people die each day as they couldn't wait any longer.

For the rest, who are waiting for the phone to ring and literally fighting to stay alive so they are still here to answer it, they may have just one final, dark winter stretching ahead of them. Possibilities gone.

Its not nice to think about being an organ donor, it might mean contemplating your own mortality for the first time. But believe me, from someone who's future will at some point depend on a transplant, you couldn't give a better gift.

You can sign up here. It doesn't take long. If its something you've always intended to do but never got round to it, then do it now. Or tomorrow at work instead of making a cup of tea. But make sure you do it.

3 comments:

  1. good intiative. I've signed up!

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  2. My Dad got that call - a kidney transplant. We waited 5 years, 3 of those he was dialysing at home but it came and now we're 20 years on and he's still with us. Miracles do happen. Prayers do work.
    I've just singed up too.
    Thanks Sharon. Keep up the good work. x

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  3. From emails, post and comments to me in person there has been a really great response to this post. So many people have taken the time to sign the donor list - and Naomi thanks for adding a personal story that proves what a difference a transplant can make in someone's life.

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