Special anniversary - please read

Uplifting!!!?

What a lovely anniversary to celebrate - and a wonderful tribute to our NHS. Too many stories are so negative about the treatment we receive it's great to hear something so heartwarming!

DD was seriously injured in a road accident over 5 years ago and she has had superb and prolonged treatment from the NHS and was finally signed off from the hospital just before this New Year. She has been left with a disability, but nowhere as bad as we first feared.

Sadly my DS died in a road accident 25 years ago and we were able to donate her kidneys and liver to save other lives. It is an immense consolation to know that from our tragedy three other people were given a second chance of life. One recipient was aged only 15.

M0nica I am eternally grateful to people like you and your family. It is "easy" to say we should carry a donor card, but faced with a tragedy it is another matter to make the decisions to donate organs. When DH was in ICU a little while after his transplant and was quite poorly as he had started fitting, I met the family of a young woman who had been brought in with a brain haemorrhage. Over the course of the day we chatted about why I and DDs were in the relatives' room and what had been happening with DH. it became apparent alas that the young woman who was in a coma was actually brain dead , not going to make it and DDs and I retreated to give them space to assimilate the shock. While I was on the ward though I saw the nurses washing the girl's hands and face, brushing her hair so gently, all the time talking softly to her as if she were just resting and could hear all they were saying . The tenderness of their care made such an impression that I can remember it absolutely clearly, 20 years on. Later the girl's parents told me that while their daughter had a donor card, what had convinced them to agree to organ donation was meeting us, seeing our DDs and realising that organ donation is giving a life, not just to a patient who would otherwise die, but giving life to his entire family.
I felt very humble. It is an awful thought that one family is grieving so that another can breathe again, but it may be a consolation to see a practical example of how much that life can mean to others.
So thank you again

Yes, my DS was carrying a donor card and it did inform the family decision because my DM felt that my DS's body had been so damaged by the accident and the several brain operations she had received to try and save her life that the thought of further interference with her body seemed too much. But the donor card helped her come to terms with the donation and in retrospect she was very glad she had given consent.

We found that staff in intensive care were so caring for the family and, indeed my DS, although she was brain dead. 48 hours have to pass between the death and the transplant operation. During that time the person is on life support so they seem to be breathing and their skin is warm and pink, so it is very difficult not to see them as still alive, but sleeping.

I am sorry if this post is too graphic for any Gransnetter, but the experience at the time was so gentle and caring and the experience of donating organs so uplifting, to know that, to reverse the usual phrase, 'In the midst of death was life'

A lovely post MawB - as others have said - uplifting?

Happy anniversary to you and your DH ?

I, too, carry a donor card ??