A different perspective
The nurses began to prep her. They cleaned the area on her abdomen where the operation would be conducted. She needed an IV, and all of her vitals were taken.
There isn’t much privacy in an affair like this. Doctors and med techs were running in and out of the room while she was dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. She was being poked and prodded by people she couldn’t see… her sight was taken by the diabetes years ago.
She knew that even with the best circumstances the operation may not turn out successful. There is always the chance that after the surgery she could be left in worse condition than when she went in.
But without the surgery she was living on borrowed time. It was hard enough to know she would never see her grand children’s faces. The idea of dying before they graduated from high school was unbearable. This was something she had to do.
Her mother stood fidgeting beside her hospital bed. Worried about her daughter. Trying not to let her know just how scared she was.
“Jan, you need to remove your jewelry now.”
“Oh. I guess I should, shouldn’t I?” She reached down and slipped her medical alert bracelet off her wrist for the first time in 20 years.
The bracelet that warned others of her diabetes and kidney disease.
The one that her organ transplant operation would free her from for the rest of her life.
As she slipped her bracelet off, a complete stranger across town slipped a bracelet on her own wrist.
This bracelet says “Donate Life”.
And I haven’t taken it off since.
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