Lauren Herschel lost her father Larry to cancer when she was in her early 20s. Last year, she selflessly donated a kidney to someone she's never met in hopes that the unknown recipient of her left kidney, known as "lefty," would have more time to spend with their loved ones. Lauren Herschel holds up a picture of her dad Larry holding Lauren when she was a child.
Photograph by: Dean Bicknell , Calgary Herald
The last thing on Lauren Herschel’s teenage mind was spending time with her dad.
Long gone were the days when she’d leap into his yellow open-top hotrod for a drive around the block to get grape Slurpees.
Larry Herschel, the gregarious forklift truck salesman, was now the man who refused to give his 17-year-old daughter the car or hassled her to hand over the TV remote.
But in the summer of 1993, Larry was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Suddenly their time was running out.
“We go along in life. We’re busy and we always think there will be time down the road to do things. And then you are faced with someone you really care about having a much shorter time frame ahead of them. It puts it into perspective how important time is,” said Herschel, now 36.
For three years, Larry fought his cancer. A surgeon removed a mass in his throat and rebuilt his esophagus from pieces of his stomach.
Radiation followed and the surgery was re-attempted a couple of years later when the cancer resurfaced.
But this time surgery and chemotherapy couldn’t keep his cancer at bay.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Losing+father+young+gave+daughter+insight/6794775/story.html
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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