DESCRIPTION

As a friend of mine often reminds people, We are not here to stay; we are here to go. I am writing these words in a Consultant s waiting room in a London hospital. Some of the other patients are showing signs of great physical distress, moving reminders that the whole world is a hospital in which everyone is a terminal patient.The South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world s first human heart transplant operation in 1967 and the first double-heart transplant in 1974. Later in life he said, At 79, people ask me, Where do you go from here? I say to them, I m on the waiting list. I don t exactly know where I am on that, or where I m going. But I m on it . So are you! Even as you read hese words you are fighting a losing battle with death, whatever your age or present state of health. What will happen to you when death wins?