Brad Szczecinski

The annual Second Chance Luncheon is coming up on Sunday, April 15th at noon at Boulder Ridge Country Club.  This is a fundraising event for Transplant Life Illinois that raises awareness of the importance of organ, eye, tissue, bone marrow and blood donations, with the goal of increasing the number of registered donors in the state of Illinois. Second Chance also speaks to the gift of life and how grateful transplant recipients are for their living donors and for hero donor families.

This year there will be two honorary speakers:
1) Dr. Maria Sienionow, professor of orthopaedics and director of microsurgery research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Siemionow, a Polish transplant surgeon and scientist, led a team of eight surgeons through the world’s first near-total face transplant in 2008 at the Cleveland Clinic. What an incredible moment in history, and you won’t want to miss her first-person account.
2) Laurie Dickinson Lee will speak about her experience at Northwestern Hospital as an altruistic living kidney donor (someone who donates to a complete stranger). As a result of her altruistic gift, the NMH transplant team coordinated a three recipient paired chain with other transplant centers across the country, saving four lives. Another inspiring first-person story.

Auction items and raffles will help raise funds for recipients and donorsto come together at the 2018 Donate Life Transplant Games to celebrate, compete and commemorate the gift of life. Team Illinois (dba Transplant Life Illinois) is recruiting transplant athletes for the 2018 Games in Salt Lake City, August 2-7. Won’t you help us Soar to Salt Lake City?