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Tuesday March 11, 2008
Hi
My name is Tonya Sellers, and about 16 years ago, my brother Dereck
Sellers then 5 years old, was hit and killed on the road we then
lived on.
Sadly, the struggle was to much for his little body, and he didn't
make it. Even though my mother was suffering from such a major loss
from something so tragic, she made the decision to donate his
organs.
In doing so, Dereck was able to save four lives. One being a little
girl around two years old, whom desperately needed a new heart.
I recently made contact with the gift of life network, and they were
able to tell me this little girl is still alive, and now in her late
teens.
So desperate to find her, to meet the girl my brother saved.
Anyone who knows websites, where recipients looking for the donor
families, please let me know. Is there a way to ever find them?
One heart beats for
two families
By Carol Mulligan/The Sudbury Star
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - 11:00
Local News -
Bill Anger still finds it difficult to reconcile the fact that the heart
beating in his chest isn’t his own. All he can do is thank Ryan Vlaad
and his family for his life.
On July 20,
2002, the
55-year-old
London, Ont., RCMP officer was dying of heart and liver failure. That
day, Ryan Vlaad, 26, of Espanola, sustained a blow to the back of the
head in a random act of violence outside a London hotel.
A disease called amyloidosis, which affects one in eight million people,
was killing Anger, leaving him with only three months to live unless an
organ donor could be found.
Ryan Vlaad became that donor, and a day doesn’t go by that Anger doesn’t
wake up thinking, “I’m alive because someone gave me the gift of life.”
Anger calls it his miracle — and miracles weren’t something the burly
cop used to believe in.
But he has had to rethink a lot of things in the last two and a half
years and he is convinced some things are just meant to be.
If they weren’t, Anger would never have met Ryan’s parents, Diane and
Bill Vlaad of Espanola, and come to share a bond with them that no one
else could comprehend.
“Ours is one of a kind,” says Anger about the relationship in an
interview at the Vlaads’ home this week. “I don’t think it will ever
happen again.”
Anger was guest speaker at an event organized by the Vlaads in Espanola
on Monday night to mark National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week.
Provincial legislation prohibits anyone from knowingly revealing the
identify of an organ donor, and it’s virtually unheard of that a donor’s
family and an organ recipient should meet.
The random blow that felled Ryan Vlaad sent him to London hospital about
1 a.m. that July morning — an hour before Anger was told a potential
donor had been found.
Diane and Bill Vlaad were visiting Bill’s parents in Timmins when they
received a phone call that their youngest son was being kept alive on a
respirator.
A couple of hours later, doctors performed the double-organ transplant —
the first ever done in
London
and only the eighth or ninth one performed in
Canada.
A month after Ryan’s death and Anger’s transplant, Anger’s sister sent a
donation to the Vlaad family in their son’s memory, Anger told a crowd
of about 75 people. Diane phoned Anger’s sister to ask how she knew
Ryan, and Anger said his sister thought, “Uh oh.”
It wasn’t until Anger’s father later sent a donation, on the same
stationery, that the Vlaads began to suspect there might be a connection
with their son. Diane called the elder Anger, and spoke with Bill’s
mother, who said she would have her son call her.
Anger describes that first conversation as a fishing expedition. But the
evidence mounted to the point the families were left with no doubt that
Ryan had been the donor who had saved Anger’s life.
Five months after Ryan died, the families met. The couple travelled to
London with a collage of photographs of their son, who was four days
away from earning the commercial pilot’s licence he had been working on
in London
when he was killed.
After two hours of tears, Anger noticed Diane was fidgeting as she sat
beside him. He asked her what was wrong and finally she asked: “Can I
touch ... feel his heartbeat?”
Diane, a nurse at
Espanola General
Hospital, grabbed his wrist to take his pulse until Anger took her hand
and placed it on his chest, over his heart.
At the meeting, tears flowed and sniffles were stifled by audience
members, many of whom knew Ryan, as Anger related the families’ story,
and urged them to sign organ donation cards.
“Either you’re waiting for a transplant, or you may need one, or you may
know someone who needs one,” he said. “If you ever want to do something
right ...”
Back at the Vlaads’ after the meeting, Bill and Diane Vlaad and Bill
Anger talked about their unusual relationship, and how they understand
it might not work for everyone.
The man who received their son’s organs is aware he is carrying precious
cargo, and cares for himself with that in mind.
Still, Bill Vlaad worries about something happening to Anger. Ryan
“still lives on in Bill Anger. If anything happens, not only will we
lose a good friend, we’ll lose Ryan twice.”
Anger has no intention of doing anything to hurt the family’s trust or
his own health. He’s single father to 16-year-old Brandi, who’s been
through a lot in her young life, and he’s got two families counting on
him now.
The parallels between the families’ lives are astounding. Ryan was
buried on Brandi’s 13th birthday. Both families once lived in Prince
George, B.C. Both Anger and Ryan were pilots.
As Anger laid in bed recovering after his transplant, he read the story
of the young Espanola man who had been killed and who was a flyer like
himself. He says he kept imagining two planes flying, then becoming one,
soaring high in the sky.
Living Tribute
In a poem he composed a year after Ryan’s death, Anger wrote:
We are as close as two
people could be
I feel your heart beat strong within me.
Together we will be for all time
One heart to live, two souls entwined.
Every joy I have I will share with you
Because now we live as one not two.
So keep flying high with God up above
And continue to watch over those you love.