What Makes Us Human: The Quiet Power of Helping Others
05/08/2025
05/08/2025
This week, one of our own, Gina, Interact’s Operations Director, underwent her second major transplant in under 12 months. After receiving a simultaneous kidney and pancreas transplant last year, a second surgery was needed, as the first pancreas transplant was ultimately unsuccessful.
She’s now recovering in Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, supported by her family and surrounded by exceptional NHS teams, and, as ever, quietly resilient.
Stories like Gina’s carry moments of vulnerability, strength, heartbreak and hope. Every transplant begins with a loss, but it also brings the chance of life, made possible by someone choosing to help a person they’ll never meet.
That idea, helping others, sits at the heart of Gina’s story. And it’s something we see reflected daily in the people who make up the Interact community.
Gina’s life today is the result of a remarkable collective effort: a donor and their family choosing to say yes. Surgeons, anaesthetists, transplant coordinators, nurses, porters, lab staff, volunteers, relatives, friends, and all of us, cheering her on from afar.
There’s something deeply human in this: the quiet, consistent decision to look after one another. The belief that together, we can turn pain into possibility. We can rebuild. We can begin again.
Organ Donation in the UK: What You Might Not Know
Since 2020, England has operated an opt-out system for organ donation. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have introduced similar systems.
Most adults are now considered potential donors unless they’ve opted out, but your family will always be consulted, which is why sharing your wishes is so important.
A few facts:
• One donor can save or transform up to 9 lives
• Over 7,000 people in the UK are currently waiting for a transplant
• Pancreas transplants are rare – only around 200 take place each year
Learn more or register your decision: www.organdonation.nhs.uk
A Wider Reflection
Gina’s story is one of courage and hope, but it also reminds us that she’s likely not alone. In a community as large and varied as Interact, there are others facing health challenges, private struggles, or long recoveries too.
We may not always know what others are dealing with, but we can always choose to meet one another with compassion.
Whether through medical miracles or everyday kindness, helping others is one of the quiet ways we hold each other up. It may not involve surgery or hospital gowns, but it does involve generosity, care, and showing up for one another, again and again.
Because helping others…
That’s what makes us human.