The 5 Mile Trail

 Today I walked five miles. The sun was shining and the air was the perfect autumn-day crispness. We had the trail pretty much to ourselves--Christine, Millie, and I--and we were free to talk about whatever came to our minds as we filled the miles with our words. 

Five miles. What a privilege.

At one point we passed another neighborhood friend, Megan. She commented that we were fast--and we are fast, trucking along at a pace of 15 or 16 minutes a mile--to which Millie and Christine both responded, "Well, Fiauna has a new, young heart! It wants to go fast!"

I have a 21-year-old heart. That's a fact that still brings me to tears. My donor was only 19 years old when her life ended and her heart was donated to extend mine. 

After my transplant, while still in the hospital, the social worker came to my room in a rare moment of privacy and asked if I wanted to know what little information she could share about my donor. Surprisingly, I had to think about it for a minute. Did I really want to know? It seems like such an obvious question. But in the face of it all, after all I had been through, I had to ask myself what or how much I really wanted to know. That information felt somehow sacred in the moment. Holding any knowledge at all was a responsibility I felt unsure I was capable of. And it's difficult to express just why. There are good things and bad things you have to accept, we are all just humans here on this earth after all, and as such sometimes the magic you hope and pray for will break your heart. 

While waiting for transplant I heard all the anecdotes about organ transplants and personality changes--believe me. My own father-in-law shared this story several times about a man in his church who'd received a heart from a 13-year-old girl and had developed her personality traits right down to a serious case of the giggles. While I knew that there was a logical, medical explanation for this that included medication side effects and trauma, it still affected how I felt in the moment I had the chance to learn about my donor.

When she shared with me that she was a female between the ages of 18 and 24, I could  not stop the immediate cascade--no, deluge of tears. My own children were that same age. Who was I to take a heart, to take life, opportunity, learning, and growth from someone so young?

I have yet to find an answer.

I wrote a letter nine months after my transplant and sent it off to my social worker in hopes that it would eventually find its way to my donor's family. I didn't necessarily need a reply; I just wanted to say thank you--it felt like the right thing to do. Then the following February--ironically on the day I found out my thyroid cancer had returned--I received a letter back. It was from my donor's mother.

My donor was Ella. She was a medical assistant and nursing student, a dancer, and a lover of music. She and her mother were very close. Precious.

There's this thing that happens when someone comes close to dying, or, in my case, receives a heart transplant: you feel this responsibility to live an extraordinary life to somehow make the second chance at life--or the gift of an organ, as it were--worth it. Believe me, I've wrestled with this one. I really don't want to go back to college and complete a nursing degree in honor of my donor. I don't feel healthy enough to run a marathon or climb a famous 14,000 foot mountain peak. Maybe someday I can come up with some kind of charitable trust to set up in the name of organ donation or whatnot. But for now, for today, I will walk the five mile trail and enjoy the beautifully crisp autumn air in honor of this 21-year-old heart.