If you’ve had a corneal transplant, you understand that your sight came with a hefty price. For me, it wasn’t until the day after my transplant that it became very real to me just how precious the gift I had just received really was. My doctor shared some details about my tissue donor and gave me the address and phone number to a tissue bank, if I wished to write a thank you note to the family.

It’s one of those things you really don’t know where to begin, you want to say so much and you want to do so much to show how grateful you really are, yet you are limited in what you can do (at least in the US.) I sat with a notebook and a pen for days and still couldn’t come up with the right words.

What if they don’t want to hear from me?