There are no words when thanking someone for your second chance at life
For the last four months, I’ve been writing, editing and rewriting the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write, to a family I have never met.
No university essay or thesis, no pitch to a CEO for a global campaign, no birthday card or letter to a loved one during one of their biggest moments could have prepared me for this.
Five months ago, I received a dual-organ transplant: a kidney and a pancreas. After 26 years of living with type 1 diabetes, I woke up with a body producing its own insulin. After three years of kidney failure, I also had a functioning third kidney.
My newest and most interesting random fact is that I now have three kidneys and two pancreases. Like most things in my life, I try to make light of it. But while I make light, the reality is that my light came from another family’s darkness.
Not many thirty-somethings I know have had to prepare for a moment like this. As someone who has spent a significant part of my life writing and editing, I somehow find the responsibility even harder.
I have placed enormous pressure on myself to make this family truly understand the size of their gift. I want them to know that, in many ways, I never felt deserving of it, but that
receiving it has given me a new mission. I want to make this gift live on by doing more for others, and it has already sent me on an entirely different path in my life and career.
There is no Hallmark card that sums up: “You have given me a second chance at life”.
When you are waiting in hospital shortly after receiving the call, you are living through something that feels as though it should be exciting. At the same time, the person and family on the other side are experiencing the exact opposite. Grief, guilt and sadness become mixed with happiness, relief and fear, like a cocktail made from equal parts uppers and downers.
Every time I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, I become stuck on the same question: what on earth do I say to a family whose loss, and whose selfless yes, gave me, my family
and my friends a second chance? You see we often forget about all the other people surrounding the gift of life.
There is the parent who no longer has to watch their child suffer through pain and illness.
There is the sibling who no longer has to fear losing their childhood best friend.
There is the partner who thought they had found their person, but never anticipated the impact of becoming a carer, partner and confidante all at once.
There are the friends who no longer have to watch someone they love struggle in pain while trying, and failing, to imagine what it must feel like to live in their body.
One body can donate multiple organs, but beyond each individual life saved, there are hundreds more lives affected by that gift. I don’t think many people considering organ donation consider this part.
I think about my donor every day. I think about them when I look at my scar, and when I crave a food I never used to like and wonder whether that somehow came from them. (Apparently there is no scientific evidence to suggest, but these donut cravings are real!).
I think about them when I realise how little interest I now have in chasing a high-stakes career, making millions or buying things I never truly appreciated. I think about them in the small moments, especially when I go to bed at night without the fear of dying that I carried for more than 26 years.
As I ponder the words on the page, I remain aware that I cannot reveal personal details or request information about my donor. Still, part of this person now lives inside me.
I wonder which football team they supported, or whether they cared about football at all. I wonder what their favourite meal was, who had the greatest impact on their life and what they might have wanted to do if they had been given more time.
Sometimes I wonder whether I could somehow do it for them.
I wonder whether they can see me. Do they watch in horror as I eat or drink something they hated? Do they cringe when I listen to music they despised? Are they proud of me? It is funny. I have spent much of my life trying to live up to my dad’s expectations of who I should be, as many women do. Somehow, those expectations do not carry the same weight anymore.
My life has changed profoundly, and now I find myself wanting to live in a way that would make my donor and their family proud. I went back to uni 4 weeks after my transplant to retrain as a psychologist and have launched a business that connects women experiencing chronic and serious illness with other women who truly understand what they are going through. I cannot repay the gift I have been given, but I can try to pay it forward however I can, using the extra time I have been given.
The past four months have not all been smooth sailing, they’ve included hospital admissions, procedures, infections, medication changes, blood tests, fear and uncertainty. Recovery has asked more of me than I understood it would. But every difficult day remains an extra day I would not have had without their decision.
I have always lived with an awareness of life’s fragility. I lived a big – huge life. I travelled, explored different cultures and cuisines, and met people everywhere I went.’
But this is a different kind of living.
Before, I jumped out of planes and worked myself into the ground to pay for expensive holidays. Now, I live more slowly and with an even greater awareness of how fragile life can be. I want my donor, their family and anyone considering ticking the box to become an organ donor to know this: I will live my second chance.
My donor will miss the birthdays of their family and friends, so I am making it my mission to keep my people close. They will not get to eat their favourite meal again, so I am going to enjoy mine as much as I can. Their family will not get to hear their strange, funny or sad stories, but I still get to share mine.
I am completely aware of how much they have lost and how much I have gained. Even within my joy, I see their grief.
I may never find the perfect words, because perfection does not exist. But I want them to know that their loved one lives on, and that I will live a full life for me, for them and for everyone who fought for me to remain here.
Perhaps that is how we should all live.
I often wonder whether my donor had clearly expressed their wishes to their family. I wonder what their final moments were like. I may never know.
But I hope sharing this inspires others to talk about their wishes for life alongside their wishes for death. The truth is that my donor is only part of the reason I am still here. Their family’s decision mattered too. If they had said no, my transplant would not have happened. We need to speak about death, regardless of our age, because death is the one outcome none of us can avoid. We should tell the people we love what we want, rather than leaving them to guess during the worst moment of their lives.
If the day ever comes when you are asked to honour a loved one’s decision to donate, please know that there is not just one person on the other side of that yes. There are children, parents, siblings, partners and friends desperately hoping for more time with someone they love.
Your yes could give them that time.
As DonateLife Week approaches, I am sharing this because someone reading may not have registered as an organ donor. Someone may have registered but never told their family. Another person may one day face the hardest decision imaginable and wonder whether saying yes could genuinely make a difference.
It can.
And somewhere on the other side of that decision may be a person like me, four months later, still trying to find words large enough to say thank you.
I will never find the words – but I will live them in their honour instead.