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Thingish Things

For the Love of a Little Girl

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 07•11

12-year-old Mumpy (from maars.net)This may be the saddest story I have ever read.  If you cannot bear sadness, do not read it. I mean it. Do not.

If you can, please read it and pass it around. This 12-year-old girl’s sacrifice cannot go for naught.

The story is getting plenty of pick-up – it’s on Drudge today – but there is no action item accompanying it. There needs to be. It would be monstrous to accept the ending of this story as it now stands.

Anyone know doctors in India or the U.S. willing to do some work for free? Or someone at Air India or another transcontinental airline who can arrange a couple of free roundtrip tickets to a hospital with a big heart and good PR sense? And does anyone know of an organization within India that can make this girl’s plan a reality with the help of foreign donors?

Certainly some gadgillionaire reading this story – or enough thousandaires touched by this girl’s intentions  — would be willing to step forward and make this right if a fund were set up. I fall into the latter category, and I am happy to be its first donor.

There has to be a way to change this story’s ending.

 

UPDATE: There is a new ending. Officials in India have pledged to pay for the surgeries this girl so badly wanted for her father and brother.  Her death was not in vain after all.   Mumpy Sarkar. That is a name to remember. RIP. 

 

Update II:  This note from my brother Gerry who has a great memory for literature, although he cautions that this probably is apocryphal: 

Reminds me of this.  Saw it in a book once – “Bird by Bird” – but it seems to have kicked around a while:

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight. 

The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl’s IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “When do I start to die?”

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