Three years ago, I could never imagine something good coming out of someone dying, especially a child. Now I know that there is one thing that could be a positive result from that tragedy. And that is organ donation.
Currently, there are not enough organs for those who are in need of them. More people get added to the list every day, and some wait months, and even years, on the waiting lists in order to receive one. The thing is, these people aren't just waiting for their lives to be saved by a fresh organ. They are getting sicker and sicker. They develop new issues with other organs, often resulting in a need for another transplant or other chronic health problems.
I know a bit about this because my 3 year old daughter Mona was diagnosed with a liver disease in 2010 and is now being put on the list for another liver. Mona will not be very high up on the list because she is functioning very well even though her liver is failing. Its a difficult position to be in, because on one hand, you want the risks of transplanting her to outweigh the risks of not transplanting her. You want the organs to go to those who need it most and will most likely die very soon without one. On the other hand, no one wants to see their child get sicker and sicker, sometimes in an agonizingly slow fashion, until they (finally) get a transplant. Any child will recover better if she gets a transplant when she is healthier rather than when she is sicker anyway.
Mona, for example, is very normal and healthy in many ways. By the grace of God, she is developing well physically, and hitting most of her developmental milestones. Most would never notice anything wrong with her. But Mona's liver is enlarged, causing portal hypertension and eventual and complete failure of the liver. This has also caused her spleen to get big as well, leading to a sequestering of white blood cells that make it hard to fight off infections. Her blood is having a hard time flowing through her veins because of this, and, like a traffic jam, flow through vessels not meant for such high volume of blood traveling through them, putting her at risk for life-threatening bleeds at any time and making her heart work harder than normal, sometimes resulting in low oxygen levels. Like a diabetic, Mona's blood sugar levels go way up and way down very easily. These issues with her organs leave Mona more tired than other kids and often, more irritable and lethargic. She eats very poorly and sometimes wakes up because of a low blood sugar in the middle of the night or wakes up pale and shaking when her sugars get low in the mornings. She gets sick easily and often. All of these things ebb and flow, she has good weeks and some very bad weeks, but all symptoms are curable if she can get her transplant.
And Mona is lucky. Many kids with her liver disease struggle with failure to thrive, repeated infections in the liver that require week-long stays at the hospital, jaundice, extreme itchiness, brittle bones, and delayed development. These kids may not be on the verge of death but all need a new liver. Think of their quality of life and how it would change if they could but have the organ when they need it, before their bodies continue to deteriorate and before they acquire more chronic health problems. Its not just livers, its not just kids. There are thousands of human beings, young and old waiting for life saving organs.
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