Match

Dr. Vanessa Grubbs has been in love with a man called Robert Phillips. That's a beautiful story I have read from her book Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers. On the day Robert made proposal with a diamond engagement ring, Vanessa smiled at him, surprised at how nervous he was. How sweet, she thought, because there could not have been a surer thing - she had just given Robert her kidney. Of course she would give her hand.

Yes, you heard it right. Vanessa has already donated her kidney to Robert, even before their engagement. She believed at her core that giving Robert a kidney is the right thing to do, and far better than seeing Robert's ordeal of three-times-a-week dialysis.

You won't read about this type of living kidney donation very often. Most of us would respond similar to what Vanessa's colleague did, "It's not an extra pair of shoes."

The answer lies deep in Vanessa's mind, as she puts it nonchalantly, "He needs one and I have two."

Try as we might, many of us could not follow the noble example of Vanessa. But that doesn't matter. Everyone is in debt, and many of us are takers. As long as we remember to be givers now and then, it's going to make a better world. Recently, I tried my best to help a good friend of mine after her diagnosis of metastatic stomach cancer. An incurable disease for a twelve-year-old boy's mum. It's as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. The bad news is that she has bleeding from the stomach and, at the same time, dangerous blood clots lurking inside her leg and lungs. Each clot damages her lung a bit more, each insult sending the signal for me to start blood thinner until, soon, the bleeding intervenes.

She needed transfusion and we gave her blood. One unit. Another one. And on and on. And so I went to donate blood this afternoon. Blood group B. Same as my friend. I wished that helps. Amen.