Maira Rana

Who am I?

I am lucky.
The first and only time I played the lottery, I won $3,000. The $3,000 check to this day is sitting in my bank account because I am not sure if I am supposed to pay taxes on it.

Luck: success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions Luck is why I am alive today.

I was overjoyed the summer after I graduated from elementary school; I had begun living with my father and had finally met my cousins and grandparents after five long years. I didn’t have to worry about my schizophrenic mother harming my brother and I anymore because she was finally gone. I was about to have the best summer ever in a three-family house with ten loud, mischievous cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. My grandmother would sit outside every afternoon under the shade of a huge tree in our front yard so we could play outside safely without running into oncoming traffic. The ice cream truck would come around playing its tunes and then we would beg her for soft-serve cones.

It was the perfect summer until everything went to shit. I began getting sick, at first no one thought much of it until I started throwing up everything I ate and was not able to sleep at

night. I went to see my primary care physician only to have her tell me to drink gatorade because I was just dehydrated. As expected, the gatorade did not fix anything; after a few days my grandmother recommended my father take me to my childhood cardiologist. She said in Punjabi, “Unu dil wala dakatar nu dakala, choto honda ve dil de masla si.” So my father did, and as we were a few steps from the doctor’s office entrance, the doctor came out with a brown box in his hands. It turns out it was his last day, he was retiring. My father explained to him my symptoms, and he agreed to see me before he left. The echocardiogram test showed that I was in heart failure.

I was immediately taken to the children’s hospital where the doctors tried a multitude of different procedures, but none were successful and I had to be put on the transplant list. I was extremely lucky because, due to my deteriorating condition, I received a heart within four days from a young girl who had recently died in a car accident. I was lucky that the girl’s family was generous and thoughtful even in their time of grief, because the colorful walls of the hospital could have only kept me alive for so long.

I will always be thankful to my grandmother because had she not recommended the cardiologist, it would have been too late. As an adult, I have come to realize that she always looked out for me more than my own father ever did. This could partially be due to the fact that she saw all that I went through in my childhood, or it could be the guilt from forcing my parents to get married and then divorced. The funny thing is that she is such an anxious soul, but she always tells me “Tension na liya kre ko.” Only if she knew it was too late for that, because now I am just as anxious as she is.

Now here I stand, eight years post-transplant, with the ability to do anything I desire and with memories I would not have if that summer luck was not on my side.

But here is the thing with narratives, you will only see what is shown. You probably thought this was a heartwarming story about luck and blah blah blah. No, this is about the truth, because what defines me today is not my luck, but the circumstances that shaped me into the person I am. Yes, I have the ability to do what I desire, but will I ever step up and do so? I have amazing memories that I would never have had, but I also have some horrible ones. What my “perfect” narrative did not showcase was my aunts’ shitty behavior towards my brother and I because she hated my mother, my father quitting his job to take care of me in the hospital, how I cried for my abusive mother because I felt alone in a house with fifteen other people, or choking down sixteen pills first thing in the morning. I will always be grateful and appreciative of my luck and circumstances eight years ago, but I feel as if that incident did not give me the inspiration or motivation that people seem to think I have after my transplant to be who I am today, but it was the shit that I went through afterwards that shaped the person I am today.

Nonetheless, I shall never forget the parents who decided to donate their young daughter’s organs so other children like myself could have a second chance.