Transcriber: Slava Botnarenku Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
I was not supposed to be here today, but I am.
Because someone has said yes to become an organ donor.
And it was four years ago that I was diagnosed with cancer.
And in order to get cancer free, I needed a transplant .
A transplant of five organs:
my stomach, my liver, my pancreas, and there were the small intestines.
I was put on a waiting list for this.
A waiting list that I would describe to be
like a living nightmare. It's just horrible.
Because every day, you get worse and worse,
and all you can do is wait.
It was so many thoughts about life and death and I felt...
I felt fear and I felt frustration.
Because there was nothing that I could do,
and also I was hopeful.
One thing that I though a lot about was
that suddenly I was receiving
but I had not myself expressed my will to become an organ donor.
It felt so wrong and I was really ashamed about it.
But yet I haven't been confronted with the question;
and now I know how important that is.
You have to express your will.
Please, think about this, the following:
if you would take an organ and accept it
to become alive again, shouldn't you also give?
And then one day, I got the phone call.
It was a pretty weird phone call.
I remember... I remember I stood at the phone
and I said, "Are you kidding me?"
And she said, "No!" With a very calm voice, she said,
"Your organs are here."
And my first thought was, where I can go and pick them up?
(Laughter)
After my surgery, I had a lot of complications.
Every day my doctors tried to save my life
and I stayed on in intensive care for four months.
This time was really tough, for me but also for my family.
One day my father was with me and he said,
"What do you wanna do today? What can we do for you?"
And I just thought, "I wanna go outside."
I was still on intensive care, lying down,
couldn't move, couldn't do anything.
And I said, "I wanna get outside and I wanna lay down on the grass.
I just want to feel the grass."
This was pretty hard considering my condition, infections and so on.
But a couple of hours later,
after I begged them, "Please help me!",
the nurses, my father, they carried me outside
and then they laid me down on the grass.
And when I laid there,
I touched the grass and I remember looking up to the sun,
and I felt, "Life is so beautiful. I wanna live.
And I wanna live it." And I knew that it was up to me.
And a couple of weeks after that moment,
I was moved to another department.
And that was also the first time that I heard
about these games. A game that is called the World Transplant Games,
it's sport activities for athletes who are transplanted.
And it was gonna be hosted two years from then
here in Sweeden, in Gothenburg.
And I thought, "Wow, if I could manage just to be there
in the audience, and, you know, try to pull up."
I was sitting in a wheelchair at that moment.
But then my rehab. I trained really hard and I started
to imagine that, "Well, maybe you can compete
in five different events for your five organs.
Wouldn't that be something?"
(Laughter)
So I trained, trained and then,
last summer at the opening ceremony,
I held the code of conduct.
I was honored to do that in front
of more than fifteen hundred people.
We were there together, the atmosphere was so great.
We were happy. We were healthy.
We were going to compete against each other.
And one moment, one minute that I do remember,
at the opening ceremony: it was when we all stood up.
We stood up and in one minute, we honored our donors.
The ones who weren't there with us,
and also the ones who had died on the waiting list.
Although, we were competitors,
competing against each other,
we were already winners. We had won the gift of life.
At the games I also met my friend and now colleague, Peter Carstedt.
And we have started an organization which is called MOD
and it stands for More Organ Donation.
Here in Sweden, the waiting lists are getting longer and longer.
And at the same time, the organ donors are getting fewer.
We need to increase the awareness and we are convinced
there is so much more that we can do.
Only 15 % of us in Sweden are registered
in the donor register. Although, we are positive
for becoming a donor.
We wanna make it easier to express the will and take action.
So we have developed a digital donor card
that you can download on your smartphone. And just a click away,
you can express your will and then you can also share it.
You can share it with an SMS, you can mail it,
you can twitter it, and you can even share it on Facebook.
So in a way to make others to do the same.
Amongst other things that we are doing,
we also have school teaching, and educating youth
about this question.
Did you know that one donor can save up to eight people's lives.
I started this speech by saying
I was not supposed to be here today.
And there are many people, a number of people
that I would like to thank for being here.
And this is my way.
This first gold medal
that I won at the World Transplant Games 2011,
I wanna give it to my donor's family.
I cannot thank you enough. I think of you, and time to time,
I also light a candle for you.
The second gold medal, I wanna give to my family.
You are my everything.
And the third gold medal that I won --
it goes to the staff at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Thank you for dedicating your life to saving others.
The fourth gold medal.
This is a dedication to everyone who are out there, waiting.
In Sweden there are over 800 people
who are standing there today.
And I know how hard it is and my thoughts are with you.
Finally, the last gold medal
is to someone who put her on the line
and went beyond the borders
and got back to life. And that is me, because I'm worth it.
Thank you.
(Applause)