Chua Ying Hong Iris, 15

School: Loyang View Secondary School

Topic: Email about your father’s gift

Award: Fifth Place, Senior Category, 2022

Dear Uncle Ben,

How have you been lately? I hope you and your family have been coping well given the current situation. I heard from your daughter that you need to go to the hospital for dialysis more often now. Your health is deteriorating and we’re all worried sick about you! So please do what’s best for yourself! I know you already rejected my father’s offer to give you his kidney, but I hope you will hear what I have to say and reconsider the offer.

I’m aware that you are currently placed on the deceased donor waiting list but it could take years before you’re able to receive a kidney. Some people have to wait over a decade just to receive an organ. You’d need regular dialysis just to stay alive until then. You already have to go to the hospital for dialysis four times a week! On top of that, dialysis is costly and takes hours each time. Wouldn’t you rather be spending that time with your family? They are all concerned about your health and hate seeing you like this!

I know you don’t want to trouble my father and think that it would be selfish to take his kidney because it would affect his health, but wouldn’t it be selfish of you to let your health get worse? Survival rate for those on dialysis decreases drastically as the years go on. For the first year there is a 95 percent survival rate, which drops to eighty percent in five years and after ten years the survival rate is only over fifty percent. By refusing my father’s kidney you are decreasing your chances of survival. If you don’t get a kidney transplant and continue with dialysis instead, you might not live long enough to see your children graduate, get married and have kids of their own. Do you really want to miss out on that? Although some people have lived for decades on dialysis it would still cause you to miss out on a lot of your children’s important milestones due to the sheer amount of time it takes.

This would also affect your ability to work even more than it already has. You can’t go to work as often because of the dialysis and if your health gets worse you might not even be able to work at all. No one else in your household works so you are the only one financially supporting them. Since you have been going to work less often you are getting paid less and you aren’t able to support your family as well as you did before. As a result, you and your family have been depending mostly on your savings but the savings will run out eventually and the salary you’re earning now wouldn’t be enough to support five people, which would lead to bills piling up and that would put everyone in a bad financial situation. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that, would you?

Choosing to stay on dialysis would also mean your wife would have to take care of all three children mostly by herself. Caring for one child is immensely challenging, let alone three! She’d have to discipline them, care for them and protect them until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Besides that, she would also have to start working to financially support you, your children and herself while coping with the stress of managing your illness. Before falling sick, you’d worked as an accountant and could earn enough to support your whole family comfortably. She wouldn’t be paid half as much as you are working as a history teacher. So do you really want to put her through all these challenges?

If you accept my father’s offer and take his kidney, it wouldn’t shorten his life expectancy. On the contrary, studies show that those who donate a kidney outlive the average population. Generally, his quality of life won’t be affected too much. There would be a very slight increase in the risk of developing kidney failure. However, I assure you that my father is a fit person who eats healthy food and exercises regularly so it is highly unlikely that he would develop kidney failure.

It would also be better for your health if you took his kidney instead of one from a deceased person. Studies show that a kidney from a living donor would give you a higher life expectancy than one from a deceased kidney donor. The success rate for a living donor kidney transplant is also higher than that of a deceased donor kidney transplant. On top of that, my father is your brother and would have a high chance of being a good match considering that he is closely related to you, making the two of you genetically similar. Donating a kidney wouldn’t affect his health much, he loves you and doesn’t want to lose you. He cares about your family too and would hate to see them struggle because of your illness.

If you are willing to accept his offer, life could go back to how it was before the kidney failure. You’d be able to go back to work as an accountant, spend more time with your family and even start playing tennis again! Doesn’t that sound great? I strongly encourage you to do so. Uncle Ben, I know you love your family to bits and would do anything for them. So please accept my father’s kidney for both you and your family’s sake. By helping yourself, you are helping them too!

I hope that you seriously think about what I have shared and accept my father’s offer. Even if you don’t and choose to stay on dialysis instead, I will respect your decision to do so. Thank you for reading my email. I hope to see you soon!

Yours sincerely,
Iris

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2022 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health). To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg