«In my chest beats the heart of his own brother“. Anna has tears in her eyes but her smile on her lips as she says these words looking at Shana sitting next to her. Her sentence swoops unexpectedly during the press conference organized by Reginald Green to launch a new campaign for the organ donation28 years after the one that shook Italy following the death of his son Nicholas.
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Their story
«Davide died at the age of 20 on March 19, 2013 in a road accident. When they asked us if we would agree to organ donation, I thought we couldn’t back down, and that maybe that was the only way to survive the ache»Explains Shana. A 17-year-old girl, Anna, receives the heart. “I had a diagnosis of bone sarcoma when I was 9 – she says – a lot of chemotherapy brought me heart failure that suddenly worsened bringing the doctors of the Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome, faced with the urgency of a transplant. They put me on the waiting list on March 19th and on the same day they told us I had a chance. Thus began my new life ».
The meeting through social media
The law prohibits the possibility of meeting between recipients and family members of organ donors but, explains Shana, “I was hoping to know the person who had received my brother’s heart, so I tried to look for her on Facebook, with a post shared 65,000 times. I had lost hope when I received a call on 19 March 2022 ». It was Anna who had tracked her down: crossing the information in newspapers of 9 years earlier she had gone back to the website of the ‘Tenuta di Davide’, the educational farm that the family created in Fondi, in memory of the boy. “Now life – Anna concludes – brought us together because we were both ready”. “Now I also feel ready to talk about it because I understand – concludes Shana – that the only way to manage the pain of loss is to tell the value of the Gift”, whose world day is celebrated on 4 October.
Last updated: Saturday 1 October 2022, 22:09
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