Foreshadowing

Organ transplantation represents a significant milestone in medical history.  In my lifetime it has gone from a experimental procedure with one year survival rates of less than 25% to a mainstream treatment.  Transplantation offers hope and survival to many patients that would otherwise have no hope.  Despite all of the medical advances the problem still exist that the demand for transplants far outstrips the supply. 

As the reality that I am one of these patients whose future is dependant on a transplant sinks in there are a wide range of emotions that I am experiencing.  In my wildest dreams I would never have expected to find myself in need a a liver transplant.  But one of the more haunting things that I have realized it that perhaps somewhere my body did know.

For nearly thirty years I have been an organ donor.  I remember signing the donor cart at 18 and a sticker for my drivers license that identified me as an organ donor.  Now I was never a overt promoter participating in campaigns to people to signup as donors.  But, whenever the conversation came up I did promote the idea.  More often than not I was confronted with objections that related the the western tradition of the need to preserve the body of the deceased and that removing an organ would be like desecrating the dead.  While I did come from a conservative background and do firmly believe in respecting the dead, organ donation seems different.

My perspective, and what I tried to help others understand, was that at the point in time then donation is a reality I would be dead and my use of the body that God had given me complete.  As a Christian I firmly believe in the resurrection and that some day I will take back up this body of mortality in its perfected and eternal form.  That it will be made whole through Christ’s atonement.  But in the meantime what I am leaving behind will just decay.  If there are portions of my body that can give added life to others, prolonging their life, relieving their suffering and the pain of their loved ones,  what more perfect gift can I give?  At this same time my family will be struggling with the pain of grief.  I believe that if they know that as a result of my death other life(s) were prolonged that will help ease their pain and give death a purpose.

I am pleased that all of my family are organ donors and have made the choice to “donate life.”  What I have only now come to realizing is that that this openness and embracing of the idea of organ donation from a young age was perhaps a foreshadowing of where I am today.  When I am facing not the challenge of giving but of receiving.