Coincidence?

In the spring of 2000, my father-in-law, Rud, received a delivery of hay for the miniature donkeys that he and my mother-in-law raise on their rural property in Williamston, Michigan (to each his own, right?). The conversation between Rud and the hay guy went something like this – and, yes, I’m paraphrasing:

     Rud: How’s it going?
     Hay Guy: Not so good. You?
     Rud: Not so good.
     Hay Guy: My daughter Jovonne is in the ICU.
     Rud: My daughter-in-law Lauren is in the ICU too. 
     Hay Guy: Jovonne’s getting lots of blood transfusions.   
     Rud: Lauren’s getting lots of blood transfusions too. 
     Hay Guy: Good luck.
     Rud: You too.

Fast forward four years – I was in the middle of my six-year full-time speaking tour (thank you, Johnson & Johnson) and was emceeing a donor-recipient event in Jersey City, N.J. These are emotionally charged events during which a blood center will introduce a volunteer blood or marrow donor to a patient whose life was saved by that donor's blood or marrow – sort of transfusion medicine’s version of “The Dating Game” with everyone holding their breath for the moment the two people finally meet face to face. 

No matter how many times I’ve witnessed this sort of thing, I still cry like a big ole baby when it happens. And that night in Jersey City, when a single mother – attending with her parents and five-year-old daughter – was introduced to the man from New York whose marrow saved her life during a harrowing experience with leukemia, there wasn’t a dry eye in the banquet hall.

I hadn’t had time to meet the bone marrow recipient prior to the start of the program, so I simply followed the script I’d been given by New Jersey Blood Services, which mentioned that she and her family had flown in from Detroit. After the program ended and my duties as emcee were fulfilled, I made my way to her table to chat. It went something like this – again, I’m paraphrasing:

     Me: So you’re from Detroit?
     Her: No, I actually grew up in a little town you’ve probably never heard of in central      
           Michigan. 
     Me: What town?
     Her: Williamston.
     Me: Williamston? As in: your-high-school-principal’s-name-was-Rud-Hoag      
          Williamston?
     Her: Omigosh, yes! How’d you know that?

Jovonne and her parents and I laughed about what a small world it is, and I learned that her parents’ farm is right across the street from my in-laws’ home. Her father – aka “the hay guy” – shared with me the conversation he’d had with my father-in-law while delivering hay to their barn back when Jovonne and I were both very sick and not expected to live. “So you’re ‘that’ daughter-in-law,” he said, able to chuckle about it, now that Jovonne and I had survived our respective medical catastrophes.

During my family’s next visit to Michigan, my daughter, Clare, and Jovonne’s daughter, Kiley, hung out, played with Barbies, ate far too many cupcakes, and probably spent no time at all appreciating the “coincidence” that brought them together. But then again, the more I wander through this adventure called life, the more I believe that there are no coincidences, that the magic of synchronicity is everywhere if we only take the time to notice it. 

With Jovonne and Kiley the Night She Met Her Marrow Donor

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Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, free.  Click here and go to the link below the "Buy the Book" button.  Zuzu's Petals is also available on Kindle and Nook.  Hardcover signed and inscribed copies are available at  www.laurenwardlarsen.com. Happy reading!

Happy Birthday, Kid!

Every year, Harold Mintz sends a birthday card to his own kidney. Sure, that’s kind of weird in itself, but wouldn’t you think he could simply put his hand on his gut and whisper, “Happy birthday, kid”? Instead, Harold signs and seals a card and then sends it to the address of a woman who was once a complete stranger. You might even say they were from different worlds.

Gennet Belay grew up in Ethiopia. When she was twelve, she developed a kidney infection that landed her in the hospital. Her father insisted that she wasn’t ill (after all, he reasoned, children don’t get sick) and discharged her from the hospital against medical orders. Left untreated, Gennet’s kidney infection worsened and, years later, nearly cost her her life.

In 1987, Gennet and her husband and baby immigrated to the US, and eight months later, both of Gennet’s kidneys went into failure. She began receiving dialysis treatments upwards of three times a week and was added to the kidney transplant list. Eleven years passed, and still no kidney. 

The whole time, Gennet prayed for a miracle. While praying on New Year’s Eve of 2000, Gennet distinctly heard a voice tell her: “This year is the end of your suffering.”

Enter Harold. As a life-long blood and platelet donor (and a member of the national bone marrow registry), Harold already knew how good it felt to help people. His wife and 10-year-old daughter already had plenty of reasons to be proud of the impact he was having on the lives of others. But after reading about a teacher who donated a kidney to one of her students, Harold felt compelled to take his giving up a notch. He picked up the phone and began the process of becoming a “live donor.”

Months later, Harold went under anesthesia, and one of his kidneys was removed and transported across town where Gennet was waiting to undergo her 45^th surgery in two decades. That evening, while recovering from his own surgical procedure, Harold received a phone call. His kidney recipient was doing great, he was told. And his kidney? “Peeing up a storm,” according to the doctor who phoned to share the good news.

Harold and Gennet were later introduced and have since shared many family meals and celebrations together. Harold has given countless talks at high schools, and when he speaks of blood and organ donation, his eyes light up. I’m not kidding – this guy is on fire about the subject!

Harold believes there are no coincidences. Gennet believes in miracles. And I believe in the synchronicity of life that brought these two strangers together to form a lifelong bond of friendship. They come from different worlds, but they now share a remarkable experience – one that underscores the depth of humanity that dwells within us all.

Harold once told me his guiding principal in life has always been: follow the fun. Apparently, Harold’s idea of a good time is to help others. With thousands of people dying every year while awaiting organ transplants, we can only hope that more people follow in his footsteps and discover the “fun” in helping others. And next April, Harold’s kidney just might be getting a birthday card from me, too.




Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, FREE here.  Click on the link below the green "Buy the Book" button.  Happy reading!  

Mom Always Took Good Notes

SHORTLY AFTER I MOVED TO BOULDER, Colorado, my mother stopped by my home and handed me a thick document. Across the top and in all caps it read LAUREN’S LOG.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s what happened,” she said.

I thumbed through page after page to see that everything she’d written in her blue notebook during the worst two months of my life was now typed up and organized, each separate date an underlined heading. Single-spaced, the pages totaled forty-seven.

“Forty-seven pages?” I asked, incredulous.

“You have no idea,” Mom said. “Hell, you weren’t really there half the time!” She laughed at her own joke and left to resume her morning errands.

By then, I was getting used to these whirlwind visits from Mom. Rarely a day passed that she didn’t stop by to give me an interesting article she’d cut out for me or to pick up an empty Tupperware container that had held the soup she’d dropped off two days earlier. I thought the frequency of her visits was tied to the excitement of finally having one of her four grown children living in the same neighborhood, let alone in the same time zone. Today, however, I believe these visits were Mom’s way of reassuring herself that the nightmare was over—that her youngest child, the one who would’ve been voted Most Likely to Laugh in the Face of Adversity, was still alive, and indeed laughing again.

I stood alone in my kitchen staring at Lauren’s Log, my head buzzing. I’d been told that Mom had taken copious notes and collected scraps of paper with others’ notes during what I now refer to simply as “the train wreck,” but I was taken aback by the abruptness of actually receiving them. Over the past six months anecdotes had been doled out—gradually and tentatively—by those who’d been with me as I lay unconscious and unlikely to live, or as I screamed from physical pain so great I wanted only to die. As if putting together a jigsaw puzzle with no photo on the box to guide me, I’d taken each detail, each story, and figured out where it fit into the larger picture that was unfolding, the richness and depth of the scene not yet taking shape. I sensed that in my hands I held fistfuls of additional puzzle pieces.

I tucked the document under my right arm and climbed the stairs of my new home, clutching the railing with both hands to pull the weight of my body up each step, slowly and one at a time. Reaching the second floor, I paused to catch my breath, then wobbled precariously to the overstuffed chair in my home office and sat, exhausted.

I began to read, and ten pages in I was choking back tears for these people: the baby, the husband, the new mom. Oh my god, oh my god, I said under my breath over and over and over again. I felt like I was watching a movie and was suddenly transposed from the audience to the screen. Holy cow, this is me, I remember thinking, as if discovering this fact for the first time.

I had no idea how unprepared I was to look back, naïvely believing that because I was alive and breathing and moving more each day, I was healing. I had no idea that the wounds to my psyche were far greater than the wounds to my body, that the true healing hadn’t even begun.

Lauren’s Log helped fill in more details, but the bigger picture revealing purpose and meaning wouldn’t emerge until I began to write about it, presumably to give encouragement to others in similar situations. With ten years of hindsight, I now know that I wrote Zuzu’s Petals for me, and in so doing gave myself the final piece of the puzzle.

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This is the Introduction to Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances by, well, ME! Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Zuzu's Petals FREE here.  Click on the link below the green "Buy the Book" button.  Happy reading!  

The George Bailey Effect

While reading the paper one morning, Manuel, a thirty-something Mexican immigrant, learns that there’s a local blood shortage.  Having never donated blood before, Manuel decides to “help my fellow Americans.” Afterward, he describes the experience as “incredible,” and from that day forward, Manuel is a regular blood donor—every eight weeks.

A new mom goes into multiple organ failure and uncontrollable bleeding shortly after an emergency caesarian section is performed to save her baby’s life. Pints of blood are pumped into her body as fast as her veins can accept them.  One of those pints is Manuel’s. Several weeks later, Manuel’s next blood donation appointment comes up and—again—the new mom receives his blood. She leaves the hospital after six weeks with a new mission: help recruit more volunteer blood donors so that others can be given the same second chance at life she was given.

In 2004, the new mom returns to the same hospital that had treated her and walks into a room filled with news cameras and people. Seated in the first two rows are twenty-two of her actual blood donors from years earlier.  Among them is Manuel, who has a bouquet of flowers in his lap—a gift for the woman whose life he helped save. When he’s called to the podium to meet the recipient of his blood, he embraces her, then her husband, and then their daughter, now four years old.

Years pass and the recession hits, forcing many to foreclose on mortgages they can no longer afford. Among them is Manuel. The stress over losing his family’s home manifests itself as serious physical ailments, and he is hospitalized. His wife pleads with him to forget the home, that the health of their family is more important than any material possession, houses included. He remains despondent, but there is one

memory that pulls him through his darkest days: giving a hug to that little girl who has a mother—thanks to him. It takes months, but Manuel is able to overcome his health issues and move on with his life.

That Christmas, the new mom receives a card from Manuel announcing that he’ll soon be a grandfather. She sends baby gifts for him to pass along to his pregnant daughter, but when they arrive, Manuel sets them aside.  “I’m saving the gifts for the baby shower,” he writes to her.  “Before giving them to my daughter, I’d like to tell everyone how our two families are connected through blood donation.” The new mom reads this, and cries. Yes, she thinks, we are connected. Then she laughs as she pictures everyone at the baby shower all heading down to the local blood center together to give blood when the party ends.

Thinking back on this story, I am reminded of the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life—my all-time favorite movie—in which George Bailey begins to understand the depth of connection he had to so many people, and vice versa. “Strange, isn't it?” his guardian angel, Clarence, says to him. “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

This is a lesson I know well—ever since receiving more than 200 pints of blood ten years ago during the birth of my daughter, Clare.  And I’ll forever be grateful that Manuel’s life touched mine.


Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, FREE here.  Click on the link below the green "Buy the Book" button.  Happy reading!