My Hero

For the most part, that title has been reserved for a fictitious character in a comic or a movie. Other times, it gets used as kind of a joke. "Ferris Bueller, you're my hero". Of course who could forget Bette's ballad "The Wind Beneath my Wings". But I gotta tell you, aside from the incredible men and women in our Armed Service, past and present, heros are tough to come by lately. That is until October 2, 2008 when I discovered, right under my nose was a real live hero.

On that date, I was surfing the blogosphere, making my usual rounds to blogs of interest. I happened upon one of my favorites. I was excited, a new post. I started to read and immediately realized this was not a regular, run of the mill, how the world is treating me post. This one was going to make me cry. Here is the just of it.

The author apparently woke up one day in early February of 2008 and saw one of those news stories that produces that lump in the back of your throat. You know the kind, man jumps in front of a bus to save a little girl or a group of citizen's gets together to help a homeless mother of two get back on her feet. I don't know about you, but I always feel a little guilty, like, why didn't I jump in front of a bus or climb a tree to save a kitten. However, as inspiring as these news stories are, its in one ear and out the other. Back to our hero. This particular story was about a woman who anonymously donated bone marrow to a teenager, saving his life. To a mere mortal this could possibly inspire one to donate some time, maybe some blood, but to a superhero it meant something a lot more, shall we say invasive.

Our fearless crusader began to research being a kidney donor. She called around to all the local hospitals, who it turns out, had no idea what to do with her. Here is how the conversation would go:

Hero: "Hi, I would like to be a living kidney donor."

Nurse: "Are you dying?"

Hero: "Not that I know of."

Nurse: "Do you know of someone that needs a kidney."

Hero: "No, that's why I'm calling you."

Nurse: "Sorry, but we do not have a program for anonymous kidney donors."

This is where I would have said "Well, I gave it a try, it just wasn't in the cards, maybe next time" and then I would start to breathe again realizing what I almost did. But again, not our hero. She continued to research and eventually found a young boy who needed a kidney. After vigorous testing, it turns out that her kidney is more of a match then the child's own family's. There are still lots of tests to do, but it looks good that this will happen.

Before you go to this blog and read it, I don't want you to miss the fact that our hero refers to all of the positive results of the testing done by the doctors as "miracles". It is true, they are miracles, but there is one miracle that stands above and beyond any of the medical ones. That is the entirely selfless and absolutely incredible choice of our hero, my sister, Cynthia Bowers. Because I know that it is possible that the family of this little boy may never know what you have done, let me and your family say, "Thank You".

http://thiscanwork.blogspot.com/