Dealing With Challenges

I will never forget being a little girl that could not snuggle with my daddy. My father was very ill and needed a liver transplant. I was too young to understand why my dad was sick and different from all my friends’ fathers. It was not till later in my life I had a true understanding of what happened.

One early spring morning we received a phone call from the Denver Colorado University Hospital that said they had a liver match up for my father. We all rejoiced and prayed and my parents were on their way to Denver. My grandmother form North Dakota came down to help take care of us children. Both my parents were gone for an entire month. This month seemed like forever for a seven-year-old daughter anxious to see her beloved parents. Although I was anxious for my parent’s arrival home I was scared because I would have a healthy father. It was going to be a different world for me.

It was a hot June day. My grandmother and I were baking cookies when the doorbell rang. Not expecting anyone I ran to the door in excitement to see who was there. I opened the door and there stood my parents with their arms wide open. That was surly one of the happiest moments in my life.

After I was able to control my excitement my parents explained that a man had died and was a donor and that this was what saved my daddy’s life. We will never know who was the donor or the family of the donor. We did however write thank you letters to the family and told them how grateful we were for his donation that saved my fathers life. It was a few years later after I grew and matured that I understood that if it wasn’t for this man making the choice to be a donor that my father would have died. You see the doctors said that when my father received his transplant he had maybe a week left to live. Without this anonymous man I would no longer have my daddy.

Being a donor is not a hard decision. It doesn’t harm you anyway and has no harsh requirements. All it requires is that you are willing to save someone else’s life when you have lost your own. Without the thousands of donors already imagine how many young children would have lost their mommy and daddy. This is why I believe everyone should be willing to be a donor. I want to save a life. Don’t you?