The night before the 5K run, I attended the Opening Ceremony. There are something like 1300 athletes participating in the Games plus living donors and donor families who are being honored. Everyone marched into the ceremony, first the athletes by teams, then the living donors, and then the donor families.

Prior to walking in, we all assembled in a big room next to the ceremony room. While waiting I noticed some kids from the Florida team in a soccer circle using a beach ball to kick around so naturally I had to join in.

Unfortunately there is no 3 v 3 soccer competition in the US Games but at least I got to kick around a ball for about half an hour and I only almost collided with a passerby once. The slow travel time of the beach ball made me look like I knew what I was doing.

Once everyone had filed in and gotten seated, the program continued with lots of heart tugging stories and music, much of it original music sung by transplant recipients and donor family members. One was by the wife who donated her husband’s organs and tissues. A baby got one of his heart valves and the chorus to her plaintive country song contained the phrase “This morning you woke up in the heart of a baby.”

Too many stories to recount, including one by a woman still on the transplant list about the number of times she has been called in for a transplant and it hasn’t happened for reasons like the organ didn’t match or whatever. Still waiting.

One guy got up with three strapping young lads and told the story of how his life has transpired since his heart transplant and then introduced the boys as the brothers of his donor.

The one story I will relate was by a 25 year old woman. She got a heart transplant when she was just a little baby, one year old, 24 years ago. A baby picture of her was shown on the big screens. The donor was an 18 month old baby girl. Her picture was also shown so it really involved the viewer, made it very personal.

As she had dual Norwegian and American citizenship, King Olav of Norway had personally convinced the Norwegian government to pay for the operation and lots of people had been involved with getting it to happen, including Barbara Bush and Super Bowl winning quarterback Joe Thiesman. Her parents had met the parents of her donor family on the Today Show while the operation was occurring but then lost contact.

When she grew up, she had a desire to met the donor family. There is a process for this to happen so she went through channels and sent a letter but never heard back. As it turned out, the donor family never got her letter.

Last April her Blackberry buzzed and she saw she had a message on her MySpace page. It was her donor family who had googled her and found her page. They talked and decided to meet at the Transplant Games.

After she told her story, the mother and sister of the baby whose heart she has came up on stage. They had just meet a few hours before. The doctor who had performed the transplant operation was also brought up on the stage.

Although most events happened after the opening ceremony, some swimming events had happened that afternoon. The girl had won a silver medal and she gave it to the mother of her donor. Very touching stuff.

The official story:

Starzl gets transplant Olympics started