The third session for the student volunteers being trained under the 'Angels of Change' initiative was conducted on August 27, 2015 at MOHAN Foundation office. The objective of the session was to help the participants understand the perspective of recipient and donor families. Our volunteers got a chance to hear the stories of both the sides.
A short film titled “Life Beyond" was shown to everyone. The film depicted real life stories of recipients sharing their lives before & after transplant and how much they are thankful to their donor and their families for giving them a second life. It also showed stories of the donor families as to how their loss turned out to be a blessing for so many people and donating the organs of their loved ones had helped them in a great way to get over their loss.
After this Mr. N K Aggarwal made a presentation sharing his struggle as a patient with liver diseases, his desperate wait for a deceased liver, the transplant itself and his life after transplant. Mr. Agarwal is himself one of the volunteers of our program "Angels of Change". He gave a 45 minutes presentation, describing the hardships he had faced after his liver failure. Mr. Aggarwal had his liver transplant on July 14 2012. He described how his liver got infected by HCV post his accident in 1979, what all societal hurdles he had to face, how did he manage between his job, family and his health. He also explained how his family supported him, despite all the difficulties they were facing because of his health.
Post Mr. Agarwal's sharing, Ms. Mamta Jain shared her experience of taking the very difficult decision of donating her thirteen year young son's organs. She narrated to the group the sequence of events on the day her son died and how the family was approached for organ donation in Sir Gangaram Hospital. She said, "What made us take the decision to donate our son's organs was, that when we were in the hospital we saw a lot of people suffering and their families in a helpless situation due to lack of organs. We were desperate to save our son, but we knew it was not possible. But if through our son's organs we could give life to these people, we should at least do that". Mamta had read about organ donation in a newspaper and when they were asked, she and her husband agreed to donate the organs.
Mamta says that their decision, in a way, has helped her in dealing with her son's death. She also expressed that attending the 'Angels of Change' session was also very therapeutic for her.
Ms Seema Yadav, Transplant Coordinator from Medanta, also shared her experiences of coordinating donations and the anxiety felt by the recipients.
It was a very emotional session for everyone present and many shared that they were overwhelmed both by the suffering and struggle f recipients as well as the courage shown by donor families.
The volunteers realized that creating awareness about organ donation is very crucial to put an end to the suffering of recipients and their families. Everyone present for the session became more determined to help the general masses by giving them correct information.
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