I have a book of blog ideas and since I have recently re-committed to blogging, I get so frustrated when things are too busy for me to write. Paradoxically, I am doing very well with my efforts to balance my life (actually plan on blogging about that) and sometimes, in this effort for balance, blogging has to be pushed to another day.
Tomorrow is Sunday and I hope to have plenty of time to write a blog or two...until then, just a thought that passed through my mind...
When us recipients refer to our donor organs it's not uncommon for us to say "my new lungs" or my "my new heart." Perhaps I'm over thinking things, but I'm wondering if that could in any way be offensive to a donor family.
The organ is certainly not "new" and by saying so it makes it sound like we got in at Nordstom's or something. That language could be seen as a little objectifying or creating a distance between the truth of the circumstances that resulted in our being transplanted.
My friend Isa often refers to to her lungs in relations to her donor. "Xavier's lungs", or something like that. I love that. They're not new, they belong to the original owner, and we are so lucky to be holding them now in their stead. Sadly, I don't know anything about my donors and so can't refer to the lungs in the same way.
I recognize the "organs are new to you" perspective but still wonder if I shouldn't be a little more mindful in how I refer to them in the future. It just feels as though the highest reverence should be used as a sign of respect for the awesome gift given....
Then again, maybe I am just overthinking it all?
See you tomorrow and good night.
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Not me. The lungs have never felt like they were "mine." I've referred to them as "these lungs," "the [expletive] lungs, "Donor Q," many things, but I stumble over the first person possessive. This is what I jotted down a few months after transplant:
...I thought of all this as I sat with Donor Q's lungs this week. They feel almost natural at times, but often they feel alien, and I sometimes struggle with their presence. Rejection is scored on a scale of 1 to 4. My rejection score has remained a 1, the least severe level. Does that make my acceptance score a 3? My body accepts Donor Q only tentatively, but what about my mind? As I sit, I understand that the answer is elusive -- that the acceptance of Donor Q is part of a larger acceptance, that most of me accepts this great gift, receives the grace with gratitude, the middle path, but that a stubborn, proud part of me rejects the very idea of grace, wishes for its old, diseased, but own lungs back. It makes little sense, and it leads me to aversion and therefore suffering. But I am not truly at odds with Donor Q, who is no reject. I am at odds with Q, with myself. I say "yes" to the miracle only on some days. On others I give no answer. I have yet to submit a definitive "no." So that is what the hell is going on, why I have taken a retreat in my own rooms. I cannot, as it turns out, reject rejection, not yet at least. Why, I don't know; I'm working on it. But this understanding at least opens the door to a rare possibility: that one day Donor Q, delta F508, and I will sit present together, finally as one, assenting to the same miraculous moment, to the miracle.
(Note: Still waiting for the day!)
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