This is a post started in April......
If you know me at all, you know my life was changed forever on July 17, 2009 when I received the gift of life from an amazing friend who donated his kidney to me. It's really hard to go through something like that and not be immensely impacted. Since then, I kept seeing people talking about training for Donate Life and being a Donate Life Ambassador. I would always think to myself it would be a great thing to get involved with, but then never would follow through.
Fast forward to earlier this week and I get a call from an amazing lady (she is passionately involved in organ donation and Hepatitis awareness) asking if I would be interested in attending a CTDN training. First I had to find out what CTDN stood for (California Transplant Donor Network) and after a little research I realized it was the training I kept meaning to get plugged into. How crazy is that? I attended the training on Saturday and was blown away by the stories people shared as to why they feel passionate about promoting awareness for organ donation.
There were two fellow kidney transplant recipients, a woman that was transplanted over 20 years ago (amazing!) and a man that was transplanted just one week before I was, also at UCSF. It was really special to talk to two people who have gone through the same surgery and especially to talk with the woman that was transplanted over two decades ago and still going strong on the graft.
Ultimately the training was to give a little more knowledge about organ donors, what can be donated, how people register, etc. CTDN goes to many festivals, health fairs, college campuses and high schools to promote awareness and encourage people to register as donors. I'm looking forward to getting plugged in!
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