Emily ( UK ) who speaks below has been waiting for a lung transplant for 18 months. She is on 24 hour oxygen and works endlessly to raise awareness of the need for organ donors. She is the bravest girl. If I can encourage even one of you to enrol then this will have helped.
" I can’t help but get frustrated. The general consensus of the population is that people support organ donation and survey after survey shows that people would like to be organ donors in the event of their death. Yet there is still such a discrepancy, only 22% of people are on the organ donor register, and still the number of transplants is decreasing. Whilst I am determined to keep on raising awareness at times I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.
It is true that every day we receive messages from people who have been touched by our campaign or who have learned that they can sign up via the net and have done so straight away (this is the most common response) but I cannot contact everyone in the country to make sure they have considered the topic… and I am running out of time. I mentioned the dizziness and puffy spells at clinic, and they explained that my heart has to work pretty hard now due to teenytiny lungs, then gently told me that perhaps I need to slow down a bit. This is not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that there is something miraculous that they can do to keep my lungs holding on that bit longer, to improve them a bit more and to help me last that extra mile whilst I wait for my transplant, but they can’t do that.
As my mum pointed out on the way home (which made me want to deck her although it is clearly not her fault and she is 100% right) it is down to luck really. If I am lucky enough to be in the 50% that get this transplant then yay, fantastic, the possibility of some years with healthy lungs is an exciting contemplation, but because it is down to luck, this is why I have decided to go out and live life now, not cocoon away in a self preservative manner. But it still makes me sad, I am not brave, I am greedy and desperately want to keep on living."
" I can’t help but get frustrated. The general consensus of the population is that people support organ donation and survey after survey shows that people would like to be organ donors in the event of their death. Yet there is still such a discrepancy, only 22% of people are on the organ donor register, and still the number of transplants is decreasing. Whilst I am determined to keep on raising awareness at times I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.
It is true that every day we receive messages from people who have been touched by our campaign or who have learned that they can sign up via the net and have done so straight away (this is the most common response) but I cannot contact everyone in the country to make sure they have considered the topic… and I am running out of time. I mentioned the dizziness and puffy spells at clinic, and they explained that my heart has to work pretty hard now due to teenytiny lungs, then gently told me that perhaps I need to slow down a bit. This is not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that there is something miraculous that they can do to keep my lungs holding on that bit longer, to improve them a bit more and to help me last that extra mile whilst I wait for my transplant, but they can’t do that.
As my mum pointed out on the way home (which made me want to deck her although it is clearly not her fault and she is 100% right) it is down to luck really. If I am lucky enough to be in the 50% that get this transplant then yay, fantastic, the possibility of some years with healthy lungs is an exciting contemplation, but because it is down to luck, this is why I have decided to go out and live life now, not cocoon away in a self preservative manner. But it still makes me sad, I am not brave, I am greedy and desperately want to keep on living."
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