*promote....now if you'll excuse me, i've gotta go hug my little girl...

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 2:37pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter bleedmegood.

I was privileged to know a very special little girl about ten years ago named Sara who had a double lung and heart transplant.
Her story was so incredible...she lived for several years after the "successful" transplant but it was very difficult to keep her body from rejecting the organs.
She had vivid memories of the little girl's life from whom she got the organs, so detailed in fact that Sara's family connected with the little girl's family and discovered that they were in fact authentic. Things like that definitely affect you in ways that are not conveyable in words.

sniff-sniff
*cough*...
no no..i'm fine.just got a buick in my throat...
anybody got a tissue?

hmm.

On one hand, I find the production quality of these bids for our sympathies distasteful and disingenuous in light of the true Human Suffering Event they represent; both with the utter commonness of such stories one encounters in hospital [and this is rather run-of-the-mill, imho] and the fact that most every person could claim an 'equal' Human Suffering Event or two in their life, I ask cynically "what makes you think your suffering is so special" and immediately suspect this is just a ploy to 'get rich' from donations [sure, the tragedy may be real, but do they REALLY need my paypal dollar more than the Sudanese, or me for that matter].

On the other hand, I got to get myself a production and marketing team...

<edit>
I guess what bugs me about this is the generic portrayal of this story. This could be ANY family with a young child in need of a transplant [or serious medical care, for that matter], and everyone could just as easily be actors. What makes this a story about Penny, specifically, or the life-changing effects of such a transplant on the Gormans? It comes off feeling like a PSA.

If this video is to garner charities, then one would like to get some sort of hook into the lives of the receiving family. This is gereric suffering, by what we see here, and nothing about Penny other than she is adorable...but so's my kid.

@oblio70it's the 3rd part of a documentary series called 8lives....and so far it's the only one with a link....it is my belief that the filmmakers became somewhat emotionally involved in this highly personal story and felt compelled to help out with this familys rapidly increasing mountain of medical bills....i highly doubt that this is some great fly-by-night sympathy swindle....I don't see the link as being any different than a change jar on a convenient store counter asking for contributions to some kids chemotherapy.....she probably isn't any cuter than your own kid, so here's hoping that your kid never has congestive heart failure.....i would hate for you to look back on your cynical rant with regret....

My daughter HAS had congestive heart failure [3 times] and sat on ECMO for 8 days, as we wondered if she would make it out alive and then sat by for another 10 more days fully uncertain of any residual severe brain damage [of which none thankfully proved evident]. I have a video of her watching me record her own heart beating away under a thin plastic film, only to hold that diseased mass in my own hands a few years later. My daughter was born with a congenital heart defect [HLHS], and has undergone a number of surgeries and dramas to spin the hours on cable news...I mean real Dramas. In short, she is weeks away from the one-year anniversary of her 2nd heart transplant...and we are feeling that terror gripping again. What 'gripping terror', you may ask. Well, it's really complicated, this Medical Child In The Family thing.

And that's my point, that no real compelling bit of information was shared. It is FREAKY complicated, and this does nothing to tell their/her story...It just says, "there is this young child that needed an heart transplant and the family was scared about something and the mother is somehow to blame for her "thing"...bummer another child has to die first...and they lived happily ever after. [you can send us money here]". This is also a relatively ho-hum story, as medical dramas with children go, if that is really all to the story...which it isn't, I'd suspect. But why, then bother to tell it. There are some real issues in this MCITF thing. What did you learn from this? About Penny?