Non-Fiction Piece
Interview with Carleigh MacLeod; Youngest Cornea Transplant Recipient in Canada
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Tell me the basics about your transplant: What is the procedure called? Why did you need it? How old were you? Where was the surgery done? I received a cornea transplant at the age of eight weeks old. I was born 100% blind in my left eye, the doctors discovered this during my initial examination immediately after my birth when my left eye did not respond to light. The blindness was caused by a rare genetic disorder called Peter’s Anomaly. The surgery was performed at the IWK Children's Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Do you know anything about your donor? He was a 13 year old boy who died from congenital heart failure. He was from the state of West Virginia in the United States of America. How did you learn this information? Does knowing this affect how appreciative you are of your donor, and organ transplantation in general? I learned about who my donor was from my mom when I was older. She was told this information by my doctor at the time of the surgery. Knowing who he is does not necessarily affect how appreciative I am of my donated organ, even if I didn’t know any details about my donor, I would still be extremely grateful because I know that someone died in order for me to receive my transplant. Also, I am appreciative of all organ donors, because if it weren’t for people like them, I would not have been given the incredible gift of vision. Are you and your family members organ donors? If they weren’t before you were born, do you think this event made them decide to become one? I am an organ donor, along with my mother, father, and younger sister. My dad came from an old fashioned family and his mother did not believe that it was right for someone to be buried while missing parts of their body. For this reason, my grandparents and their eight children were not organ donors. This changed after my transplant, because my dad realized that without organ donors, his child would grow up half blind and face many challenges due to this, so he decided, along with most of his siblings that it was beneficial to be an organ donor. So in other words, your dad put his beliefs aside to focus on your health? Do you think that more people and cultures should do this? Yes, he did put his beliefs beside as I was what mattered most to him, not the fact that he would be sinning. He was not going to prevent me from having a healthy, full life based on something he wasn’t sure if he even believed in. Yes, I believe that more cultures should put their beliefs aside and focus on the health of their loved ones. In my opinion, there is no downside to being an organ donor, because once you die, your organs are either going to rot in the ground or be burned to ashes, so it would make more sense to donate them to someone else to improve the quality and/ or length of their life after you have passed on. |
(All images were provided by Carleigh MacLeod.)
Many medical procedures create ethical controversy, but those differences should be overlooked as human lives must be the primary focus.