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]