Good morning everyone~greetings on this wonderful Friday to you all. In these parts of the world we have survived a week of weird weather, even by Kansas standards. From tornadoes to ice and snow, sleet and hail, and everything in between...a week to remember. Even in the worst part of it, we give thanks for whatever moisture hit the ground. Sometimes it was delivered in forms we weren't too crazy about at the time but you gotta take the bad with the good, especially in drought stricken areas like our state of Kansas.
Tomorrow I will be in Wichita, over at Christ Lutheran Church, to be one of the speakers at the Celebration of Heroes event sponsored each year by the Midwest Transplant Network. It honours the families of those people who have died and subsequently donated their organs, tissue and corneas to those in dire need of them. Because of my experience with "old lefty" I was asked to share my thoughts. Gladly I am so doing and this blog post is to share with you what I am going to say to them tomorrow. I vowed when I went through this ordeal that if anything good could come from it, if I could tell as many people as possible about the value of "donating life" upon our own deaths, then I would do so...even with my own very last breath. This is my way to share it with you. The text of what I will say to them follows below, if you would like to read.
Have a wonderful Friday, my dear friends and family~May the future be bright for each of us out there. Thank you for being my friends, one and all. Love you guys!
Hello to you all this afternoon and what a privilege and honor I do count this day~to be able to be with you and to join in this celebration of the lives of many people, both the living and the dead. My name is Peggy Miller and on August 4th, 2011, I was involved in an accident that would forever change my life and I am thankful to be able to join you here today and to tell you the story.
I'm a cyclist and yearlong, especially during the summer months, there is nothing that I love doing more than riding my bike. The summer of 2011 was a great one for riding, well that is as long as you rode before the scorching sun came up every day. Each morning I would rise and by the time the clock said 6:00 a.m. I was hitting the streets of my hometown, Hutchinson, Ks. I was always happy to get in a fast 10-12 miles each day and during that summer, there never once arose an issue of safety or concern. Not even record breaking heat or drought conditions could stop me from having fun on my bike and by the time early August had arrived, I already had logged over 1,000 miles for the year. Then came August 4th.
You know, I remember a lot about that day and I guess one of the things that will always stick with me was the beautifully cool weather that had been ushered in overnight in south central Kansas. I was so used to riding in early morning temperatures already in the 80's and 90's, that when the thermometer registered 72 degrees outside at 6:15, I couldn't get on that bike fast enough. For the next hour I rode the streets, following the path that I always did. It was fun and I couldn't help but to notice the smiles on everyone's faces as I passed them along the way. Many folks, just like me, were out riding, running or walking in the FINALLY pleasantly cool breeze of the early morning hours. By the time I headed back home to my house, I was really "flying" on that bike of mine, going so fast that I was unable to make the driveway into my own front yard. Rather than slowing up and taking the next driveway, I made the fateful decision to try to jump the curbing instead. Wrong choice~
My front bike tire hit the curbing head on at about 10 mph and this much I can tell you, they made curbing to last back in the "good old days" of 1936. The concrete didn't give an inch and when my 55-year old body hit the hard earth of my front lawn, my life changed forever and it was a change for the good. They told me in the ER at our local hospital that I had shattered the radius of my left arm so badly that it looked as if a "bomb had exploded" inside of me. I knew I was in trouble when the best orthopaedic surgeon in our city said to me before I went to the operating room, "Peggy, This is bad~I don't know if I can help you." After an emergency surgery later that morning in Hutchinson to patch me up as best they could, I was referred onward to Dr. Prince Chan of the Kansas Orthopaedic Center here in Wichita. 6 days later on August 10th, I re-entered the surgery room for the first of two procedures there in order to try to save my left arm, in particular my badly busted wrist.
After everything was over and I was brought back to the recovery room, the first thing that the nurse did was to hand me an envelope from the Midwest Transplant Network. She told me something that surprised me, shocked me beyond belief. I learned that during the procedure to save my wrist, I had been given the bone tissue of someone who had died and donated it after their death. She told me that the envelope contained information about how I could contact the donor's family if I wished. A string of numbers by a bar code on the outside of the envelope was the identifying marker for the person who had been my donor. I remember as she walked out of the room that my eyes filled with tears and I took my right hand and reached over to hold my left arm in its cast at about the same place I thought the bone material would be. It was if I was giving that person a hug from the bottom of my heart and I remember saying, "I love you. Thank you for saving me."
As I lay there on that table while they monitored my vital signs for the next 30 minutes I began to wonder, who was this person who helped me? All of a sudden, the strangest thing happened~as I was lying there and thinking, the name "Eleanore" immediately popped into my mind. It was such a strong feeling and I just couldn't shake it. Was the person who died named Eleanore? Was it a woman or a young girl? Maybe their Grandmother's name was that? A thousand thoughts ran through my mind and they would be thoughts that would haunt me in the days and weeks to come.
When I made it home and started the recuperation process, I sat down to write a letter to my donor's family. I wasn't sure what to say but I knew that they would understand. I thanked them for what their loved one did for me and for, I am sure, countless others. I told them a little bit about me, that I was a 55-year old school teacher from south central Kansas who was riding a bike that morning like a ten-year old instead of the responsible adult rider that I should have been. I wrote them again at Thanksgiving time but didn't hear back from either of the letters. I understood totally and even though I was sad about not knowing who they were or how that name "Eleanore" played into all of this, I was ok and at peace.
Later on towards Christmas and the fast approaching second surgery to fix the appendage that now had become to be called "old lefty", I was given two pieces of good news. I received an email telling me that my donor had been a man, age 45, from my neighbour state of Missouri. I didn't learn anything further than that about him but you know, I really didn't need to know any more. It was enough for me to know that much. But dang, that name Eleanore, why couldn't I get that out of my mind? I didn't give up searching. I knew that the man had come from Missouri, so I searched the Internet. Was there a city in Missouri called Eleanore or perhaps a county? Maybe an Eleanore Street? I got the answer to all of those questions a few days later when my sister Sherry came to visit me for the holidays from her home in Altus, Oklahoma.
Seems she had done some researching on her own and of all things, she learned of the original derivation in both the Latin and Greek languages for that special name. From the Latin word, lenire, it means to soothe or to heal. From the Greek word, eleos, it means compassion. When my sister told me of what she found, it meant the world to me to finally understand what I believe was a message from God that afternoon now almost two years ago. Eleanore was the gift of healing, given with great compassion from a man in Missouri to a woman in Kansas. It made perfect sense to me then. From that point in time, I knew enough of who my donor was and finally I was at peace. I will see him in Heaven some day and when I do, I'll know exactly who he is. And the first thing I am going to do when I see him is to give him a big hug around his neck.
I have told this story many times to different people along life's way. Today marks the first time to tell it in front of such a group as you folks are. I cannot imagine, not in my wildest of dreams, what it would have been like to have had to make the decision to allow your family member's usable and still viable organs, corneas and tissue to be used for transplant. I would not even pretend to understand. But on the "receiving end" of this whole process, I do know what a life-altering moment it was for me. From the minute my donor's bone tissue was grafted into my body, Peggy Miller's life was to never be the same again. What a bitter sweet moment it was in time....one man's life was given while the lives of many others, mine included, were saved.
I believe that having that accident and getting hurt so badly was the best thing that ever happened to me in this life. No longer do I take things for granted as I once did, no longer do I put off doing something that I really want to do. Every day I live life to its fullest in much the same manner that I know "Eleanore's" donor would have hoped to have done. I wish to thank you, all of you, for the loving decisions that you made at a time when people, just like me, expected it the least yet needed it the most. Where on earth would we have been without you our dear friends?
From where I stand today, the future looks very bright and promising. In just 5 weeks, I will be married to a most wonderful man named Mike Renfro. I'll be retiring from teaching after 35 years, so we have chosen to have our wedding on the very last day of school in front of all of the students. We'll be living in the beautiful city in Colorado called Montrose. For all of the blessings I have been afforded in this life, I give thanks. It took the gift of someone's bone tissue to make me realize just how many blessings that I really did have.
From the "Good Book", John 15:13
"No greater love hath a man than this, that he would lay down his life for a friend."
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