Insights from the big apple
This past week I was lucky enough to attend a medical conference where I was asked to speak held at NYU Langone. For those of you who don’t nerd out on transplant facts like I do, NYU Langone is one of the leaders in transplantation in North America, and in that room I sat as colleagues to some of the top names in the medical field of transplantation.
I didn’t love New York (more on that later) but as I sat in bumper to bumper traffic, as I looked out over immaculate displays of wealth on one street to absolute poverty on the next, as I heard stories of people walking through the hospital hallways who didn’t know if they were even going to survive, I realized I am lucky. Because I get to be alive to experience this.
And my story could have very easily ended a different way.
At this conference we discussed how the field of transplant needs to change. There needs to be more options available for people facing end stage disease. And, as I shared, we need more patient support efforts for those of us navigating the system so we can not only survive but thrive.
As our plane flew across the border in the light of the rising sun, I thought about how I almost died. I thought about that girl laying in the ICU bed wanting to give up. And I remember the dreams, the voices, all with the same theme: there is life after death. Keep going.
They were the same words I heard at 16, standing in the middle of a horse pasture on my family’s farm the day after my cousin was killed. The same words I heard at 12 in a hypoglycaemic coma I wasn’t expected to wake up from (and didn’t want to wake up from if I’m being honest). The words I prayed over myself and my family after the devastating pregnancy loss that took the life of my child, and nearly my own.
Life can begin again. There is more. Keep going.
If you asked me to imagine a few years ago what my life would be like now, I wouldn’t have thought of this. This is the life I never dreamed of for myself, and one that feels so authentically mine I might burst.
I’ve thought a lot over these last few days of pie. Carl Sagan said “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you can’t start with the apples because you didn’t make them. You have to start with nothing, which means creating a universe”
As I stand with my apple pie, it’s not just me who made it. I think of all the ways everything conspired so perfectly to bring me here. I think of both my organ donors, every skilled surgeon who not only touched my body but the body of every transplant recipient ever to learn what they needed to learn and for science to evolve the way it did in order to save my life. I think of every lost love, every missed train, every stuck in traffic moment. If I’d been earlier, or later… If one thing had been different would everything be different?
Listen to me when I say this: everything is happening exactly as it is meant to. You don’t need to know the way - the way knows the way. Your job is to be present, to trust, to make the most of your one wild and precious life. Everything did not come together so miraculously for you to spend your days living someone else’s life. Make apple pie. Make something big. Life can begin again, and again, and again.
There is life after death. Keep going.
