Be an organ donor!

To continue with the National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week, I was editing my transplant story today and came across this bit that I thought perfectly explained how amazing it is to have received lungs. It highlights how it felt at that time to have new lungs. Right now, at over a year post-transplant, the fascination of having new lungs has worn off. It's now my new normal to run across the street without having a coughing fit. It's good to read the stuff I wrote after the transplant as it makes me appreciate my new lungs all over again, even with everything that's currently happening.

"It was a bit odd that after so long of only thinking about my lungs, they had become the secondary concern. Not only because of all the other complications I was dealing with but also because, for the first time in a long time, I no longer had to think about them. I was on room air and able to breathe comfortably. 

My oxygen saturation held steady at 95-97% which blew my mind. I didn't even notice about how little I was coughing (not that I had the muscles to cough) until Mom mentioned how amazing it was that I could walk around the little hospital block without hacking. It's astonishing how fast my body adjusted. It was effortless to breathe for the first time in years, it was, and still is, hard to wrap my mind around the difference.

I can breathe without stress. I no longer have to think about it every time I climb a flight of stairs or run across the road. It literally saved my life.

All because a family decided that their loved one would be an organ donor."

Please donate. Donate blood and tissue now. Donate organs later.