The weather is slowly warming up here in Manitoba. When Kristin Millar and I travelled to Winkler last Thursday the skies were clear blue and the sun coming in the windows was strong enough to almost make us forget about the snow on the ground. Despite some delays due to GPS navigating issues, we were off to a good day, but we had no idea that it would be the kind of day that we’ll hold in our hearts for years to come.
Our trip to Winkler was prompted by a letter I’d received in the mail from a girl in grade 8 at Winkler Elementary School. Susie was doing a research project on organ donation and had a number of questions to ask. I started typing out a response to her but stopped decided it might be better if I could respond to Susie a little more directly.
I phoned the school and talked to Susie’s teacher, Ms Louise Fultz.
“We do presentations to schools, would you be interested in having us out some time?” I asked.
“That would be wonderful! Susie would love that,” Louise exclaimed. “You would travel all the way out here?”
“Yes, we do travel outside of Winnipeg. Organ donors can come from all over Manitoba, so we like to talk to as many Manitobans as we can,” I said. Louise said this news made her day. I laughed after hanging up the phone. If only it were this easy to make everyone’s day.
Kristin and I do presentations regularly to high schools and community groups. Sometimes we get a really great response with lots of questions and comments and sometimes the room is a bit quieter. We remind ourselves that even if we’ve made an impact on one person and inspired them to register for organ and tissue donation, we’ve potentially changed eight lives or more. Every donor counts.
When we got to Winkler and found our way to the school office, Susie was there to greet us. She showed us where we could hang out coats and offered us water to drink. She asked us for our full names and wrote this information into the blank spots in her introduction speech. Susie admitted to being nervous about getting up to speak in front of her classmates but her nerves didn’t show.
After the presentation we joined Susie and Louise for lunch. Susie said that it was the stories of the amazing people who received and donated organs that inspired her interest in the topic. I don’t know many eighth graders right now, but I don’t imagine Susie’s a typical one. Her thoughtful, intelligent question and curiosity about all things organ donation had Kristin and me impressed. There was a good dose of the more typical girl chatter though too. Over shared plates of cake, we also talked about family, the transition to high school and shoes. Susie loves shoes.
Organ donation is a gift, but the best part is that the giving doesn’t only happen in the operating room. Kristin and I have had the pleasure of meeting so many kind people through doing presentations. Susie and her teacher reminded both of us of ourselves and the important teachers and mentors we had growing up. The opportunity for us to give that back in some small way was incredibly satisfying and special.
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