Saturday, February 26, 2011

Advocate For Life

I was head-butted by a four year old today. I cried - she didn't. I'm pretty sure I was crying from laughing so hard (right in the middle of sacrament meeting), but I'm not 100% positive... Also, I cut my finger tip open with scissors last night. It was weird. I knew that I was bleeding, but I had to literally stop and think about what I was supposed to do to stop it. You'd think after watching all 6 seasons of Grey's Anatomy in a month and a half, I'd know right off the bat to put pressure on it... Like I said, it was weird.

You want to know something pretty cool? In 2007, my dad anonymously donated one of his kidneys (he did end up meeting the recipient). In 2009, I wrote a poem about it for a creative writing assignment. And now, in 2011, my dad's inspiring story AND my poem are going to be published in a book about organ donation. I'm a pretty big advocate for organ donation and to this day, what my dad did amazes me. The recipient, Melanie, and her mother, Kris, are from Australia. In 2008, when I was a mere 16 years old, I was able to go to Australia and spend a month with Kris. It was an amazing experience and I met amazing people down there. It was amazing to see all the lives that my dad had changed by donating his kidney to Melanie. I was  introduced to everyone as, "Ali, daughter of the donor".



It messes with my formatting if I try to add captions to the pictures, so I gave up on that. The top right picture is of my cousin Alysha, me, and Kris at Byron Bay on Kris' birthday. The bottom right picture is of Alysha, Franko, and I at Byron Bay. Franko worked with Kris and he was kind of like our Austalian dad. The bottom left is a picture of Melanie and Kris. And the top right... yeah, I just like peacocks. Also, my parents donated their truck to Kidney Cars. I guess there are a number of ways that that helps fight kidney disease. I posted a couple of links below. The first one is a link to the Kidney Cars website (if you are interested in that). The second is a link to my dad's story about his experience donating a kidney. It's kind of long but so inspirational and so worth it. The third is a link to my poem... which is posted on this blog (November, 2010).


No comments:

Post a Comment