Why volunteer at the Games? To say THANK YOU for saving my mom's life...

By Eileen Collins
Theta - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

WHAT DO I GET FROM VOLUNTEERING AT THE U.S. TRANSPLANT GAMES?  For me, it’s my way to say THANK YOU. To explain, I am incorporating some of what I wrote to the donor family that gave my mother the gift of life in the form of two new lungs in July 2008:

I am a daughter. I am a daughter to a kind and hard-working 60-year-old retired nurse, mother to 3 daughters and grandmother to the most perfect 2-year-old boy. I can tell you that she suffered for almost 15 years due to a disease that started with a dry hacking cough that would not go away, crescendoed to a frightening phone call from the doctor while I was getting ready for my high-school prom, and left her lungs scarred and dying, unable to support her, unable to put oxygen into her body, starving her heart for oxygenated blood, causing her to be unable to walk 10 steps without having to stop and rest because she was in pain and dizzy.

My mom’s disease required her to carry heavy oxygen tanks every time she wanted to leave the house to do something as basic as go to the store.  Eventually, a solution appeared: She just stopped going. My beautiful mother, tall and blonde with green eyes I’ve always envied (redheads always want green eyes, but frequently settle for brown), and pretty, fair coloring, became a ghost of herself. Her pretty coloring turned grey and waiflike, suffering from the same loss of oxygen the rest of her body had experienced. Her hands, which I could describe to a T now, turned blue and purple from the inability to keep warm. Her cough became her calling card, something that always told you where she was. It became a joke of sorts in our family: If you were looking for mom, just be quiet a moment, she’ll start coughing and you’ll be able to find her. 

On July 17, 2008, my family got the phone call that there might be a set of lungs for my mom. So off we went – my sisters, my father and me – on the first flight out the next morning. Off we went into the unknown, not sure if this surgery would happen and absolutely clueless as to what would await afterwards. And on July 18, 2008, in the evening, my mother received the gift that would save her life: a set of lungs.

Since then, my mother has had the chance to thrive and flourish in a way she never dreamed possible. She got to hold her grandson. She renewed her wedding vows with my father after 32 years of marriage. She was able to see me walk across the stage at my law-school graduation. And I can tell you that we both wept during my graduation, awestruck that she got to be a part of an event that by all rights she never would have lived to see if not for the generous gift of life from someone we never met – someone who was going through the worst kind of pain imaginable and who, in his or her grief and sadness, decided that other people should be spared from their pain, sickness and grief.

We talk about my mother’s donor every now and then. From what we have learned, our donor was a young man with a real zest for life and a taste for adventure. My mother remembers that when she needs to do things like exercise by saying things like, “Well, Nick didn’t sit around doing nothing with these lungs, and neither can I.” We do not keep in touch with our donor family, but they remain in our thoughts and our prayers still.

I will likely never meet the family that made the decision to give my mother the gift of life, and it is hard not to have someone to thank in person. But for me, being able to come here, to the Transplant Games, and to be a part of the celebration of life that organ donation creates for thousands of people every year, allows me to say THANK YOU. Thank you to the families who generously gave what you did not have to give. Thank you to the doctors and the nurses and the caregivers who work so tirelessly so that everyone, no matter what their ailment is, has a fighting chance at life. Thank you to the scientists, the researchers and all of those people working to show the world just what can be done when the powers of science and medicine join forces with the power of faith. 

– From a grateful daughter