I’ve been pretty lax at blogging this week, mostly because I’ve not been feeling too great. The chest pains aren’t going away and the doc’s can’t put their fingers on what it is, other than to say it’s nothing too much to worry about, which is a encouraging.
I was going to blog about how tough the week’s been and how I’m now pretty rubbish at being ill, so out of practice have I become. But yesterday something changed all that and put my week into perspective.
A month or so back I delivered to a friend of mine a portable oxygen concentrator which I’d kindly had donated to me by Emily after she had her transplant. It’s something of a lucky concentrator (called Travelair Claire, christened by Em), which has seen 3 previous owners receiving new lungs and passing it on to a friend who needs it more than them post-op.
Luck, though, runs out, with no more brutal demonstration than last night, when I learned that my friend, Sam, known to most of the CF community as Princess Sam, had died yesterday afternoon.
Sam, like me before and like many still, was waiting for a lung transplant that never came. When I found out I felt completely numb. How does the world decided who gets what? Why have I been lucky enough to be given a second chance at life when someone just as deserving doesn’t. What makes me so special that I get to try again, whilst Sam had just 22 years on this earth to fit in all she could?
Every year nearly 500 people just like Sam die whilst waiting for a transplant that would save and transform their lives. I’m at a total loss to understand why I managed to avoid being part of those statistics and why I’m now living a life and doing all the things I’ve wanted to do and why Sam’s family now have to face the loss of another daughter.
Life is so unbelievably unfair sometimes and I wish I knew why things like this happen, but I don’t and I know that I never will. For now all that matters is that we continue to do all that we can to increase awareness of organ donation, get people to sign up and help to prevent these wonderful people being lost. And, what’s more, to live my life in a way that befits someone being given a second chance – to make the most of every opportunity, to give thanks every day and to hope that somewhere those we’ve lost are smiling down on us and wishing us well.
Breath easy now, Sam, you’re one in a million. x