I owe my life today to two people who I’ve never met and never will. I received the gift of life in the form of a heart transplant on January 6, 2006. That miracle heart came from a young man named Roy. He was a teenager when he passed away, and his family made the selfless decision in the time of their deepest grief to donate his organs.
On October 6, 2018, I received a second miracle heart when Roy’s heart and I had to end our journey together. This time, I received the heart of a teenage girl, but I have not yet learned her name or how she came to be my donor angel.
Nearly eighteen years of life have been gifted to me through the kindness of strangers.
These hearts, I have kept them alive as much as they have kept me alive. By accepting his heart into my body, I let Roy’s love live on inside of me, giving me the ability to raise two boys close in age to himself. Without my body to house it, that young man’s heart would not have gone on to rescue hundreds of dogs, panting and howling in the back of my Honda. Without my body, that young woman’s heart would not have flown to Hawaii and climbed Diamond Head. These hearts have powered my body, and I, in turn, have carried them on adventures both great and small.
I try to balance my life between honoring these precious gifts and giving them the best possible care while still seeking enjoyment in the small pleasures of life. I eat my leafy greens and chia seeds, fruits and vegetables, but without the transitory delights of a taste of buttercream frosting or the occasional taco, to what end are we eating our roughage? Life is to be lived with delight, not grudgingly trudged through like a war of attrition.
Of course, I am also grateful for the talented surgeons who sewed me together in a beautiful merging of Mary Shelley and ee cummings. “It’s alive! I carry your heart in my heart.”
I’m grateful for the dedicated hospital staff, especially the nurses. If the surgeons are the fathers without whom my rebirth would not be possible, the nurses are the mothers who care for you after you emerge from that second birth. The nurses feed you, wash you, change your bedding, all while delivering the drugs, inserting IV needles, and tirelessly pounding chest compressions if your heart should decide it doesn’t want to do its job anymore.
Despite the side-effects, I’m grateful for the transplant drugs that keep my body from identifying my hearts as bad influences and evicting them from the neighborhood. The drugs that save your heart destroy your body. The list of side effects is daunting. Beyond the indignities of nausea, vomiting, and involuntary defecation, there are the more worrisome possibilities of bone thinning, kidney failure, and cancer, to name a few.
How many pills can you take to save your heart before you poison the rest of your flesh? Like an owl licking at a lollipop until it gets to the chewy center, I faithfully swallow, pill by pill, until I find out.
To quote Ozzy Osbourne, “I don’t want to live forever, but I don’t want to die.”
This holiday season, consider giving the Gift of Life. You can register at this link to make your wishes known to become an organ donor.
It’s quite shattering to consider what you have endured. And yet you send gratitude into the world, wrapped in beautiful writing.
This piece honors the gravity of organ donation. I once interviewed the mother of a young man whose heart and other organs were donated, and I’ve never stopped thinking about her. My DL has always had a pink ‘donor’ dot.