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It's not every day a story makes me contemplate my moral integrity. But today, one did.
Without revealing exactly the way the tale goes, basically, it is one of a young person in need of an organ. While a story can be happy, or deeply sad, a story's really just a story until it happens to you.
Which made me wonder. If my mother, or father, or brother needed an organ, would I put myself under the knife to give them one?
This reminded me of an episode of Grey's Anatomy (a terrible source for a news reporter to use). In one of the few episodes of that terrible program, an older man desperately needed a heart of a specific and rare bloodtype. Not a soul could be found with the exact heard he needed--except his daughter, who was incidentally killed in a car accident that day after leaving the hospital to visit her father (see what I mean by "terrible program"-when the heck would this happen in real life!?). So, the compassionate doctors approach the man, who has just lost his daughter not even 24 hours earlier and tells him that her heart is the ONLY heart that could save his life, and to ask him if he's willing to take her organ.
That's a pretty heavy duty decision, wouldn't you say? To some, I suppose it would seem like a given: the man's daughter is dead, and she wouldn't know either way. But what about the fact that his daughter, his entire daughter, is gone and that now, for his own personal gain, the man would take a piece of her forever.
Maybe I'm being a little harsh on this fictional character from an entirely unrealistic tv program. But don't ya think it'd be a little weird to be walking around with the heart of your dead daughter?
The point is, this all made me wonder, from the other side of the donation, what it is like to know you are living and breathing on someone else's organ.
I imagine if it were me in this position, I would be amazed that someone would make a sacrifice in such a way just to keep me kickin'. But would I make the same sacrifice for someone else? I just don't know.
