RECEIVING AN ORGAN IS A LIFETIME COMMITMENT

It is a commitment to yourself and your body, to your family, your team of doctors, your children and friends.

It is a commitment to your donor and their family. That'll be the heaviest weight you'll ever carry.

It is a commitment to the wish you used to whisper each night before bed, 'Please don't let me die waiting.'

It is a commitment to medication, every twelve hours for the rest of your life, to monitoring your health and keeping doctors appointments. Even though you've seen the the inside of the Heart/ Lung clinic over 250 times since 2008. Imagine all those hours lost waiting for your turn? And there are people who complain about lining up at the post office.

It is a commitment to pushing through, I went to bed last night feeling bloated, uncomfortable and in pain. Simply because life is busy, it's the pointy end of the week and my body is ready to call it quits. Just as I tolerate my symptoms, it is time for the next round of meds to swallow. I'm struggling with this right now, my body is physically rejecting the pills as I pop them into my mouth, over a dozen of them. Too often they come back up and I have no choice but to push them back down, there is no alternative. It's take them, or die.

It is a commitment to never being afraid of needles- self administered or otherwise, of cannulas, of procedures- whether they be while wide awake or under twilight sedation. To operations and biopsies and skin checks, and dental appointments, bone scans and pap smears and mammograms galore.

It is a commitment to saying yes, please keep saving my life, no matter what I have been through, I can take more.

Because you signed up, the day they said they could save you, you signed your life away to always being accountable. You just never know how long that life will be...