#WATWB February – Girl Giving a Heart Away

Welcome to the We Are The World #WATWB Blogfest for February 2018.  Please visit our generous co-hosts.  They are Shilpa Garg, Peter Nena, Eric Lahti, Roshan Radhakrishnan and Inderpreet Kaur Uppal.

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Alisha with her parents. Source: SBS news.

Due to a rare disease, little Alisha Kapoor needs a heart lung transplant. In the process her heart is healthy and she is willing to donate it to save another persons life. As SBS News reports

Alisha Kapoor knows little outside the walls of the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, in Sydney’s west. 

She turns five in a few weeks but has spent the majority of her life living at the hospital, away from her parents and two siblings in Blacktown, 13km away. 

“I think we have two houses, one here, and one there,” her father Raj Kapoor told SBS News. 

“This is my second house. My wife, she stayed almost one and half years, or more, in the hospital, 24/7.”

This is all because

Alisha has an incredibly rare genetic disorder; surfactant protein C deficiency, which affects less than 10 children in Australia. It means she struggles to breathe and is permanently on a ventilator.

But while Alisha needs a lung transplant, Dr Pandit says it is safer to transplant a new heart at the same time. 

“Technically it is very difficult for the cardiothoracic surgeons to separate the lungs from the heart,” Dr Pandit said. “As a result, in her case, it will have to be the heart and lung together. Technically it is much better to do it as a block transplant, rather than separating just the lungs.”

Here is the part that is so, literally, heart-warming

Among this comes a positive. While Alisha will become the youngest heart-lung transplant recipient in Australia, her heart is perfectly healthy. It means she can donate it, and save another young life in the process. 

“We feel very good [about it],” Mr Kapoor said.

“Someone will save my kid, and my kid will save someone else. Everyone should be a donor, it’s a precious gift of life.” 

Mr Kapoor is urging everyone to think about organ donation and the lives that could be saved.

It is touching to read that someone so needy is willing to give, to share, for the sake of another’s life.  It reminds us of the inter-dependence of our lives.

The rest of the article and video can be found here.

Alisha Karpoor and her father, Raj.

Alisha with her father. Source: SBS News.

Here are some verses to close a story on the kindness people show to one another.

     The kindness of others
     is all they ever wanted,
     the laughter of neighbors
     prospering in the blue light of summer.
   
      The generosity of others
     whose spirits, like their long-legged
     children blossoming into a progeny
     of orchards and fields, flourish.
Two stanzas from ‘The Kindness of Others’ by Cathy Song. Source: Poetry Foundation.

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Want to know more about this blogfest?  Read on.

Once again, here are the guidelines for #WATWB:

1. Keep your post to Below 500 words, as much as possible.

2. Link to a human news story on your blogone that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Paste in an excerpt and tell us why it touched you. The Link is important, because it actually makes us look through news to find the positive ones to post.

3. No story is too big or small, as long as it Goes Beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.

4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD badge or banner on your Post and your Sidebar. Some of you have already done so, this is just a gentle reminder for the others.

5. Help us spread the word on social media. Feel free to tweet, share using the #WATWB hastag to help us trend! 

Tweets, Facebook shares, Pins, Instagram, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. We’ll try and follow and share all those who post on the #WATWB hashtag, and we encourage you to do the same.Just click Here to enter their link and join us! Bigger the #WATWB group each month, more the joy!

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Colours Shaded Blue

This one is hot off the press!  News has not been good in recent days. There have been various changes, griefs and losses in our lives.  Friends move away. Others have family with cancer. People in our State (of NSW) are beset by devastating fires. This poem takes up some of the mood and moves to concrete, Christian hope.

 

 

Colours Shaded Blue

If colours fill our lives

Then these days are shaded blue;

As fresh news comes upon us

We face this shadowed hue.

 

Change and loss and illness

Fill our spoken words and screens;

The unknowing makes us wonder

As we tremble at unseens.

 

Sometimes we have too much information,

At others, not enough;

But when those near us suffer

The going becomes rough.

 

It’s this sense of having no power

To change or help or fix

The situation there before us,

There are no short-cut tricks.

 

So, we travel as companions

And together share the load;

Like the broken figure on the cross

Who struggled a gravely road.

 

To truly understand each other’s

Heavy heart and throbbing head,

It helps us to remember

God shared in our living and our dead.

 

When we were misunderstood the other day,

Remember in Jesus’ preaching

And his crowd that walked away.

 

When others round us suffer

And we grieve who or what we’ve lost;

Jesus’ heart grieved his mate Lazarus

Yes, God does know the cost.

 

If we really believe in Jesus

Then we believe God lived our way,

And is with us as much tomorrow

As he is with us today.

 

But where, O where to find him?

Well look beside you here,

He’s in a friend’s embrace,

And in another’s face of cheer.

 

He’s in the person bringing flowers,

The one with casseroles at your door,

His spirit washes you in the shower,

And wants to show you more.

 

More of his peaceful presence

In a buddy sitting by your side,

Even when no word passes,

When in the car you ride.

 

Even in these days of troubles

When our feelings are coloured blue,

Our God is right there with us,

Because we see him in you.

 

 

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