JayDar,
As a non-directed donor myself, I am glad to see that you would like to be a non-directed donor, too. My strong motivation was, like yours, to "pay forward."
I would like to tell a brief story related to your question.
I am a family physician. My medical career has been entirely working with American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and communities. (I am not Native.) A young woman came to me to be treated during my first years in a tribal clinic, with a series of black eyes (= domestic violence), and sexually transmitted infections, and a few other alcohol-related, temporary, problems. I knew she was, in a word, a "loser."
Then I went to the graduation ceremony at a near-by college. Among the people graduating who received a diploma -- dressed to the nines, beaming -- was the "loser." (And this "loser" has continued her career trajectory of more and more success and achievement ever since, for decades now.)
I certainly learned my lesson that night of graduation -- the lesson that judgements of the worth of people, and predictions of their future, are likely to be not accurate at best, and demeaning as well.
From whom have I received much, and thus the kind of people I want to "pay forward"? My parents, from whose ethics became my ethics of wanting to be a non-directed donor, and who instilled in me a love a learning upon which my becoming a physician was built, among other things? The achievers and movers-n-shakers who contributed to and built universities and medical schools? The scientists and scientific physicians before me, that produced modern medicine including the science and practice of surgical transplantation and control of recipients' rejection of the transplant? The nurses and social workers and ... -- all essential, full, contributors to health care? Did (and do) I want to pay forward to people whom I judge are or will become those people? Yes, of course -- because whatever I have achieved has depended on the work and life of all of them.
The people who built the interstate highways, and other roads, and airports, and airplanes, and the buildings in the universities, and ...? The custodians, that keep clean and livable all those buildings, including medical centers and hospitals and clinics and ...? The soldiers, who defended our country, even in wars that in retrospect we probably should not have started, some of whom end up with PTSD and/or drunk, on the street, violent, "losers"? (I was a soldier in one such war.) The children, many of whom bring joy to their parents, some of whom are abused and become people in prisons or abusers? People and children with developmental delays, such as children and adults with Downs Syndrome -- many of whom bring joy to their parents and friends, some of whom are abused by their families or friends or neighbors -- and many of whom do not receive the education and support that would enable them to reach their full potential (unlike I, who did receive that education and support)? Some people on all those groups, after all, were uneducated, non-achievers, illiterate, slaves in American slavery, gays, despicable in some people's eyes, "losers."
Did (and do) I want to pay forward to *those* kinds of people, or people whom I judge are or will become those kinds of people? Yes, of course -- because whatever I have achieved has depended on the work and life of all of them.
Well before the transplant program started to see who could be a match, I told the surgeon that I would be perfectly happy if the best-match recipient was of a race, or sexual orientation, or education level, or with developmental delay such as Downs Syndrome, or whatever, different than my own.
For what it is worth, that was what I understood "paying forward" to mean as a non-directed donor.
Bill
Topic: I am interested in donating a kidney (Read 8018 times)