Freeman Patterson is one of Canada's foremost photographers. He's still active in his late 80s, and sends out a regular newsletter. This one had a startling story. I have reproduced the introduction below:
"When you are reading this letter, you can safely assume that I’ve just celebrated an anniversary I never expected to celebrate – my 25th.
On the last day of January 2000 Dr. Vivian McAlister O.C., his team, and a donor somewhere in Canada gave me a new liver. It was my second new liver in five days, the first having been rejected by my body immediately. Of course, I knew nothing about the events at the time nor for a long while after, as I was kept in an induced coma until well into March. When I was finally permitted to emerge from my long sleep, Dr. McAlister dropped by my bedside to tell me what all my family and friends had known for weeks. “You’ve had two liver transplants,” he told me, “not one,” adding these arresting words, “You’ve won the 649 national lottery five weeks in a row, you had less than one percent chance of surviving, you shouldn’t be here.”
Sobering, incredibly challenging words to begin a new life, yet my odds of being born in the first place had been much greater. On the day I was conceived something approaching a trillion of my father’s sperm rushed to meet my mother’s egg. One sperm won the race; all its competitors died and were discarded by nature. That was the first lottery I won, the big lottery we all won – and the prize was the gift of life.
