Learn, Live, & Hope

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

-Albert Einstein

We’re hoping that everyone had a wonderful Holiday and spent some time with friends and family.  Perhaps you ate too much?  Did you get the gift that you wanted? Did you ring in the New Year properly?

As we look back at 2011, we realize that we certainly learned some things.  As we start to dig in to 2012, we have some wishes, but they may come at a price.  A price that we might be willing to pay.

Scientists are reporting break-throughs in stem cell therapy.  They have begun a sort of human trial using a patient with the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s to see if they can create neurons that will stop or ease the degenerative effects of the disease.  Imagine the promise that this would mean to millions, like Pat Summit, the record-setting coach of the University of Tennessee.

They’ve also seen progress in using stem cell therapy to thwart heart disease.  A team from Cedars-Sinai was able to reverse heart damage in a group of patients who were suffering from failure.

The price that we would pay would be missing the joy of meeting Margaret.  She was the delightful lady walking around with the Freedom Driver, the wearable heart machine.

In a surgery that was almost certainly a death sentence in the past, our twins (and we feel like they were ours!) Maria and Teresa were separated.  VCU now has the procedure under its belt, the entire school, it seems, played a part, and VCU added to a stellar reputation.  We hope that the success of the hospital and the relationship with The World Pediatric Project will give us the opportunity to serve some other deserving children in the future.

Did you know that at almost the exact same time “our twins” were being helped there was another set of twins, Angelina and Angelica, who were separated in California?  Perhaps surgeries like this will become more commonplace.  While Maria and Teresa were from the Dominican Republic and the California twins were from the Philippines, perhaps these surgeries are a signal that children in medical crisis will no longer have to be ferried halfway across the world to seek medical treatment.

It would be nice but we so loved our time with the girls.

You probably know that we’re into social media.  We use Facebook and twitter to share news and events.  It gives us a more immediate outlet to keep our family connected, involved, and to give shout-outs to the volunteers that help to keep our train running.   Facebook is now helping to connect people in need.

April Paschke, a spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, says that more and more people are connecting through social media for solving a medical crisis.  People used Facebook, twitter, and e-commerce sites like Craig’s List this past year to send out the call for organ donations, and it worked!  In 2010, 16,800 people were the recipient of a new kidney.  Over 90,000 are on the waiting list.

By sharing their story through social media, these people were able to reach out to friends and family who in turn shared it with friends and family.  This put them on a much larger list than the average organ-donor site, and each of these people were connected in a much larger way.  There are no official numbers yet on how many people have found a donor directly through this new media, but it is very exciting.

If Cojo would’ve had this outlet a few years ago would we still have found an opportunity to wear our fancy hats?

We certainly have some resolutions for our New Year.  We resolve to better serve the guests who spend time with us.  We resolve to be more compassionate to their situations and more responsive to their needs.  We resolve to be more appreciative of the hundreds of volunteers who give thousands of hours of their personal time.

The costs for our wishes?  We could probably pay that price.