Cristina has always been my least favorite character. She's a cold bitch, a mean one at that. I know doctors have to be clinical, maintain a certain distance for their own sanity, but she is just beyond the pale. Loving Owen has humanized her. I don't want to see her revert to her old ways.
So I took a break. I skipped a few episodes rather than be annoyed for an hour like I was during last year's Dead Denny Debacle with all of the ghost sex. That was just BAD. Even if it was a means to an end, it was still BAD.
I was really considering breaking up with Grey's -- my TV dance card is very full as it is -- but I decided to give it another shot since I'm getting together with a friend who is a diehard fan later this week and it's so much fun to discuss with true fans even if we might not agree.
I'm so glad I watched last week's episode. It was sad, very sad, in parts but it shined a light on a very important but little considered factor in one of modern medicine's major miracles -- organ donors.
One of the patients had no heart. Hers was destroyed so they removed it and hooked her to a monitor to keep her alive. Crazy, right? The surgeons' goal was to keep the woman alive until a donor heart became available. When one did, Cristina did the dance of joy, all psyched up for the surgery.
My stomach clenched and my eyes burned as I watched a very familiar scene on television. It's like writers forget or don't want to remind their viewers that organs don't just magically appear because someone prays really, really hard for one. A person has to die to make a new heart available. Cristina wasn't taking that into account at all as she celebrated.
Teddy, though, she wasn't having it. She dragged Cristina into a patient's doorway and there they watched a father wailing over his brain-dead 18 year old daughter's body. And that's how it works -- as happy as someone is for a new lease on life, that is how wrecked another family is. I know, I've been that family. Twice.
Teddy knows, too. Well, whoever wrote Teddy knows. I am so glad that the Grey's writers didn't gloss over where organs come from like I gloss over where babies come out with Jack, leaving in the happy, easy stuff and failing to mention the blood and the pain and the knives.
Watching tonight, I may have cried a little. I may have yelled, "That's RIGHT!!!" when Teddy told Cristina it was no reason to celebrate. I may have called Cristina a word that starts with C and ends with UNT. I wasn't really talking to her, though. Hi, I know she is the figment of someone's imagination. No, I was talking to all the people walking the earth right now compliments of my boys. All the people who never wrote to my mom to say thank you.
I don't care if they have thought about it, thoughts count for nothing. I don't care if they couldn't find the "right" words. Thank you. THAAAAAANK YOOOOOU. How hard is that? My kids have been saying it since before they turned 2. Two little words, infused with so much. It would have killed them to let my mother know that a piece of her child, her husband is still part of this world and that they will forever be grateful to the heroes who chose to give even at the end, even when there was nothing in it for them?
That's what organ donors are -- heroes. They may not rush into burning buildings or fight on the front lines in a foreign land but they give all that they have, all that is left of themselves, so that others might thrive. I am so proud of my guys for making that choice while they were healthy, knowing it was the right thing to do.
Thank you, Grey's Anatomy, for reminding your viewers of the importance of organ donation from all angles. You have regained a fan in me.
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