Three A Day: Waiting

Three A Day: Waiting is a unique writing project comprising of a blog , a set of postcards and, ultimately, an anthology. Here's the story:

On Friday 10th October, 2014,  my ten year old son joined the transplant waiting list. This isn't new to us. William had a small bowel transplant six years ago. After six fantastic years, all made possible by a wonderful donor, we are waiting for someone else to say yes to giving the gift of life. William's bowel is no longer working and he needs a new one. Not only that, he needs a liver, possibly a colon and, to make the plumbing easier, a pancreas and duodenum too. In short, he needs a HUGE operation and one that is all the more risky because it is a second transplant, taking place in a body that has already been through extreme stress and has an immunological system altered by six years of immunosuppressive, anti-rejection medications.

To be able to survive this journey myself, I had to find an opportunity in the challenge I am facing.  I  am a writer so words are the only way I can express how this feels for me. This gives me the chance to share our journey, raw and from the heart, as we travel in the hope that others facing similar journey's in their lives can cry with me, laugh with me and be inspired with me. But there is something else I want to achieve too.

In the UK, three people die every day waiting for a transplant. The tragic fact is that not enough of us say yes to organ donation and most of these deaths could be avoided. I want to use this project to highlight what life is like on the transplant waiting list, to remember and commemorate those of our fellow members of the list who will sadly never get to see life on the other side of their transplant operations and to challenge people to think about organ donation and help prevent those people from dying in the first place.

So, I am going to write three pieces every day on the blog. They may be poems, short stories, descriptive passages, my feelings or just the random ramblings of a somewhat scared mum. No matter what kind of day we are having, not matter how I am feeling. I will write. Then, that day when the phone rings to tell me that a wonderful person has donated their organs to William and he goes into the operating theatre to receive them, I will stop. The number of writings across the blogs will be equal to those who are on the list with us today, on day one, but whose lives have sadly ended because they were not lucky enough to receive that phone call themselves.

When the blog is finished, I will select some pieces of writing to put onto a set of 10 unique and limited edition postcards. Then, when we are through the other side of the transplant journey, I will have a look at the body of work I have collected, select and edit some pieces to make a limited edition anthology of finished works, together with illustrations and photographs from our journey. The postcards and the book will only be available to those who help fund this project. 

I want to be able to give this project the time it deserves and for that to happen it needs to be funded and this is where you can help and gain some special rewards in return.

How did I come up with the target sum?

Well, it's difficult to put a price on writing. If I was to set the target at what creative writing should be worth, or what I get paid to write features in magazines, it would have been much higher and totally unrealistic. Instead, I found that the average waiting time for an intestinal transplant last year was 188 days. I priced each piece of writing, three a day, at £10 each so £30 each day for an average wait.