My Persuasive Speech

I know you guys really want to read the speech I will be giving tomorrw, but it is a topic that is close to my heart. Some of the facts has been omitted or embellished for dramatic effect but the stories are true.

Please read:


Angela’s Will to Live

One morning when I was twelve years old, my eleven-year-old sister Angela started complaining that her leg hurt. As the day wore on she began to cry in pain and by nighttime, her leg hurt so badly she could not walk. By that time, the regular doctor’s office was closed, so my parents put all of us kids in the car and rushed over to the Scottish Rite Urgent Care Center. The doctors did some x-rays and then admitted her into the hospital for more tests. After a night filled with x-rays, CAT scans, MRI’s, and any other tests imaginable, a team of doctors came into the room.

I will never forget the moment the doctors told us the results of the tests. Angela had cancer in her hip joint. An hour later Angela was in surgery having half of her pelvis and reproductive organs removed. As soon as she woke up from the surgery, the chemotherapy and radiation treatments started. These treatments lasted for a year and then she was in remission, or cancer free.

Less than a year later, we found out that the chemotherapy that saved her life also caused her to have heart damage. The poison, or chemotherapy, the doctors pumped into her body to kill the cancer weakened her heart and put her into congestive heart failure. Medication helped for around four or five years, but then her heart became so weak she had to be placed on the heart transplant list. Her chances were small of receiving a heart due to her rare blood type of AB-, which is the rarest, and her small body.
This is the beginning of my story dealing with transplants and organ donors, but my family is not alone. According to The Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, as of today there are 100,601 people on the transplant waiting list. This is something that applies to you and your family. Anyone at any time could suddenly need a transplant. According to Donate Life America, every twelve minutes another name is added to the organ transplant waiting list and eighteen people die each and every day due to the lack of organ transplant donors. You or a family member could be the next name on the list. Do you want another person to die because you did nothing?

The solution is simple. Sign up to become an organ donor when you renew your driver’s license. Fill out an organ donor card and have it witnessed by two people. Talk to your family about your wishes, because most people do not realize that even if you want to be an organ donor, your family has the final say and will be asked to sign a consent form before the organs can be donated.

According to www.giftdonor.org, “85% of Americans believe in organ and tissue donation, but only one-third of the available organ donor’s families actually give their consent for the donation.” This is a problem that occurs because people do not discuss death with their families and their family does not know their wishes. According to an article titled Transplant Medicine; Family conversations may be key to organ donation published by Heart Disease Weekly in November 2005, “92% of people surveyed said they would be likely to donate a family member’s organs if that person had expressed their desire to be a donor, while only 43% said they would be likely to donate a relative’s organs if the person hadn’t mentioned it.” I have completed all of these steps and even had the witnesses for my donor card be my husband and my parents so they cannot say they did not know. I carry my card with me at all times because I know what can happen to someone’s life when a transplant is not received in time.

For Angela, a transplant was not received in time. After spending the last two years of her life waiting for a transplant at The University of Alabama Hospital in Birmingham, she died. She was eighteen years old and could finally make her own medical decisions. She was given two choices: Number one: She could choose to get a new heart pump because the old one was causing her to have mini strokes. There was a fifty percent chance she would die on the operating table. Or number two: She would have a massive stroke caused by the excess blood clots formed by the old heart pump and would be a vegetable for whatever time she had left. She chose her one chance at life – the surgery. On the operating table, she had a massive stroke and an internal bleed the surgeons could not stop. She went into a coma and never woke up.

Not all transplant cases end like this: My dad is involved in a medical malpractice suit because when his eye doctor was performing Lasik eye surgery on him he picked up the wrong syringe and blinded him. The doctor injected disinfectant into his eye. He has received a cornea transplant and can see perfectly, actually better than he could see before. My mom was in a terrible skiing accident in Lake Tahoe about five years ago. She tore all of the ligaments in her knee when her skis did not detach from her ski boots when she fell. She received new ligaments from a donor and can now walk and run. She has no problems and is in better shape than she was before the transplant.

So, in conclusion, believe that organ donation can make a huge difference in people’s lives. According to an article titled Give the Gift of Life Become an Organ Donor published by the US Fed News Service on April 20, 2007, “the power of an organ donor is immense. A donor has the opportunity to save up to eight lives through organ donation and up to twelve lives can be changed through tissue donation.” I ask you to choose to give the gift of life. Talk to your family about organ donation. Fill out an organ donor card. And sign up to be an organ donor when you renew your driver’s license. Angela donated what organs could be donated upon her death. I like to believe she gave the gift of life to many even though she did not receive it for herself.

Thank you.