Dear organ donor,

You do not know me and to be honest with you, I’m not sure what your name is either. My dad was your anesthesiologist, the man who kept you alive for your last few hours while you donated four of your organs to other needy patients across the country.

Even after you were gone, you saved four other lives with the parts you no longer needed. You saved mine too, and I didn’t even need an organ.

You gave me something much more than that. You gave me a future in medicine.

I had convinced myself that I would be no good in the field of medicine so I had ultimately declared my major as political science. My heart was not in it and so my father, in one last attempt to nudge me towards his profession, asked me to come observe your surgery. So I did. And to be honest with you, I didn’t expect much. One surgery wasn’t going to suddenly change my entire life plan.

But then I saw you on the table.

Lifeless, but heart still beating.

And my jaw dropped to the floor. Here you were, pronounced brain dead, and using your last few moments to save others. It was truly a miracle.

I watched as the doctors removed your heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys.

They spoke of you kindly. A few of the nurses knew you from previous visits to the medical care facility you had been placed at. They told me that you were alone, your family spread out across the country, none of them on their way to give you their final goodbyes. The nurses had called your family but their response was; “she wont know if we’re there or not.”

My heart broke into a million pieces.

I am sorry that no one was there for you. I am sorry that you had to go through this alone. But I must thank you.

Because after this moment, I rushed to the woman’s locker room to change out of my scrubs, sweat running down my temple as tears ran down my cheeks. I cried for ten minutes alone in the locker room.

They began as tears for you and your death, but then I heard the sirens of the ambulances on their way to deliver your organs to other needy patients while you were on your way to heaven.

And I smiled. Your death was not in vain.

You saved four other lives, four other families who were waiting patiently for their loved ones to finally leave their hospital beds and return home.

Right then and there I decided that this is where I was meant to be. I wanted to save all of these lives like you did. So thank you, thank you for showing me the right path. Thank you for giving me a future.

Sincerely,

A future doctor because of you.