A Feel-good Story

A Feel-good Story

by Mustang

Our man on the beat in the U.K.

We Americans like to think of ourselves as a philanthropic nation —and we are.  Aside from our government’s involvement, individual Americans do a lot of good in the world, too.  Beyond responding to natural disasters with our military, we privately fund charities that reach out to help those in need and it adds up to billions of dollars every year.

Next to the United States in terms of caring for others, I think, must be the British.  For a nation that is three times smaller than the state of Texas, the amount of British contributions to charitable causes staggers the imagination.  It is in their nature; it may be, in fact, that we Americans have derived our concern for others from our mother country—and some of these stories are quite touching.

Oscar is a five-year old British lad who has been fighting a rare form of leukemia since December.  Since then, Oscar has had twenty (20) blood transfusions and four weeks of chemotherapy.  It isn’t working.  Now, Oscar is in a race against time to find a stem cell donor who might save his life.

His parents went public in an appeal for help finding someone who might be a match for bone-marrow transplantation.  What happened was that Oscar’s school organized a match-saving campaign.  Eighty health professionals showed up as volunteers to take blood samples and DNA swaths, DKMS (a non-profit organization devoted to fighting blood cancer) is paying for lab tests.  All that was needed were some volunteers.

Nearly 5,000 British volunteers showed up for testing.  They stood in the pouring rain for hours waiting for their turn to find out whether they could become the match that saves Oscars life.  Whether the effort will be successful is up to God … but if Oscar eventually succumbs to his disease, it won’t be because no one cared.  No matter what other criticisms one may have for the British people, there is no doubt in my mind that they are among the most humane people on the planet.

The story touched me deeply; I wanted to share it with my friends back home.

Mustang has other great reads over at his two blogs – Thoughts from Afar

with Old West Tales and Fix Bayonets