Dear Ferret Folks-
 
I felt sad reading Debi the Weasel Queen's post yesterday.  It is really
tough trying to find donated organs.  The demand for them is much greater
than the supply of them.  People spend years on waiting lists.  Sometimes
they die waiting, it's tragic.
 
What's even sadder is when sick children need organs.  In many cases,
they can't accept a donation from an adult, the replacement organ has to
come from another child.  That means, of course, that somewhere, there
are shattered parents who lost a child.  I've been told that no other
loss is anything even remotely like that one, and I believe it.
 
The availability of replacement organs for children is much smaller than
it is for adults.  It makes sense, children can't make the decision to
sign up as organ donors.  Their parents of guardians make that decision
for them, at a desparately painful time.  My Mom is a doctor, and she has
had to ask parents if they would consider making that gift.  She says
that often, such an idea has never even crossed a parent's mind, and
they just can't cope with it.  They say no.  Some of them feel sad about
that decision later, when things are quiet and sane and they have time
to reflect, but it's too late then.
 
Understandably, most parents have never sat down with one another during
good times, and discussed the possibility.  Who ever thinks of something
like *that*?  If you have children, I wish that you would, just once.
The moment when some stranger like my mother comes up to you in a
hospital and asks you about that, well, that's not a good time to be
asked to make yet *another* sacrifice, is it?  You've already had to
give up so much.  But if it were your child that needed a donor cornea
to see again, or a kidney, like Debi's sister in law....I think you get
the idea.
 
Please talk to your partner.
Alexandra in MA, whose childhood playmate needed a heart.
[Posted in FML issue 4968]