Tonight on a very special blog post....

Hello my fellow blog cabins,
Hows it going? Recently (read:5 minutes ago) I started seriously thinking about end-of-life organ donations, then cat videos, then cat food, then liverwurst and finally back to organ transplants. In the future I probably shouldn't collect my thoughts while you-tubing. Anyways, from everything I've heard and read about organ donation over the years, it seems almost wrong not to be one and "you're talking to someone with very loose definitions of right and wrong here", he said, loading the stolen Girl Scout cookies onto the truck. It's not like you're not losing anything (being dead and all) and just by filling out a few forms, you could save/drastically improve another person's life.

But still despite the logical nature of organ donation there still exists a squeamishness to it all that I just can't shake.  I've tried to pinpoint it to some aspect in particular, but it still eludes me . It's not the image of someone removing my organs, I'll be dead and be too busy roasting on a spit over a cauldron of flames to notice some guy helping himself to my reasonable condition you-could-probably-buff-out-the-dings kidneys. Maybe the opposite even, the idea that as I'm lying in the ground stone cold dead, that my heart will be alive beating somewhere else in someone else, is  a strangely comforting notion.

I suppose its the general thought of death that spooks all of us. Giving away your organs can be seen as bowing out of the "life" race. It is both the recognition and preparation for death, kind of like making a buying a coffin, but squishier. Once they remove your organs, you're gone and never coming back. It's exactly that sort of never-go-back decision that leads to the what-ifs, like what if I had gotten better, done a complete 180 and lived another good 5 years. It's normal to think like that, it's human nature to want to keep on living. But it's not reality. You know they (the people in charge of removing your organs: doctors, Korean gangsters you owe money to etc.) wouldn't be taking your organs, if they thought for a second, you still might make it. It's not some willy-nilly decision they throw a dart at a board to decide. They're also not just going to give away your organs to the first person that asks, your liver won't just be handed to the first guy that stumbles into the ICU with a half-empty bottle of Jäeger in each hand. Like I said before these are professionals, it's their job to ensure that your donation is given to the most appropriate/deserving candidate.

Here is where I originally planned to write some maudlin anecdote about an imaginary guy dying of organ failure, and how only you could save him. But I've decided not to. Why? Because as I said before organ donation should be a logical decision,  and arguing for it by trying to sway emotions seems absurdly hypocritical. So instead dear reader I will just leave you with this with this link.


PS: To counteract the odd seriousness of this article. CAT VIDEOS!
PPS: The reason I didn't touch on live organ donations ie) giving someone part of your liver or one of your lungs is because that's a whole other can of worms.