Showing posts with label Organ Donation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organ Donation. Show all posts

Sunday, October 21, 2012

An Ending More Dramatic Than Fiction

I'm somewhat enthralled with choosing your own ending on the interactive type of movies and books..  You can choose option a or b, maybe even more.  I would choose a happy ending every time.  I'm just that way...

I recently finished reading 'My Sister's Keeper' by Jody Picoult, written in 2004.  Yes, I have just started reading her books and am still up in the air as to whether or not I am a fan.  'My Sister's Keeper' was a NYT Best Seller, so chances are you might have read it already, plus it's been 8 years since it was published, not to mention the movie, starring Charlize Theron.  But just let me tell you, if you haven't read or seen it and intend to do so, this is a spoiler alert.

In the story, the main character is a young teenager who is sick and tired of being her sister's perfect genetic match, practically living in the hospital to donate blood, plasma, marrow and whatever else she is expected to do to keep her older sister alive.  It is for that purpose that she was conceived.  Her parents wanted a perfect genetic match and went to the lab to create her.   But the girl is so tired of it, sues her parents in court and eventually wins.  In the middle of all this, her sister's kidneys go out.  Of course, then she starts having 2nd thoughts, because after all she loves her sister.  Unfortunately, before she can do anything about it, she is killed in a car wreck and she ends up donating her kidney anyway through organ donation.  
   
I have what I think would be a great 2nd ending for the book!  The thing is, it's actually true!  Here is the 2nd ending - The girl decides to go ahead and donate her kidney because she loves her sister.  She goes through with the operation, which is a major surgery with risks of its own.

The surgery turns out fine, no complications.  She is in recovery and her sister is going into surgery to receive the donated kidney.  When the surgery team goes to retrieve the kidney, which has been packed on ice, it is nowhere to be found.  After looking high and low, it is discovered that a nurse just coming on duty threw it away in the trash! So in the end, no one gets the kidney and it sucks for everyone!

This actually happened in Ohio. A nurse just coming off break didn't hear the surgeon announce that the kidney was on protective slush, ready to be donated and threw it away in a dirty utility room.  I would be so mad if I had just given one of my kidneys away and found out that it had been essentially thrown away.  And the poor organ recipient.  Talk about dashed hopes! 

OMG, I just did what?
It just goes to show that fiction is hard-pressed these days to be more dramatic than what we live everyday in real life!