Hélène Campbell raises awareness about organ donation through dance
Not even being a lung transplant recipient can slow down Hélène Campbell.
After being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis a short time ago, a condition that hardens the lungs and decreases elasticity, the 21-year-old danced with her doctors in Toronto yesterday to celebrate her successful double lung transplant.
Now that she is on the road to recovery, one of the things that Campbell would most like to do is to continue her quest of raising awareness about the importance of organ donation and she plans on doing it with the help of a few dance moves.
"I started doing this dance in Spain a year ago, " she explained. "I was in Barcelona learning Spanish and I didn't know that I had a degenerative lung disease, I probably wouldn't have gone on the trip if I knew, but I decided to do this dance move everywhere I could in Barcelona. Now, a year from [then,] here I am able to do this dance move again and it's kind of become the signature move for organ donation."
While dancing with her parents and doctors, Campbell's zest for life and excitement about sharing this moment with the world was truly inspiring and something that you could see she has been waiting a long time to do.
"Eventually, I am going to make a commercial and I am asking people to send in videos of them doing [the dance move], and it will say 'I've become part of the movement of organ donation,'" she said.
After the conference, Campbell said that a new goal of hers is to go back to Spain where the move began and learn to ballroom dance. However, that trip may have to wait as DeGeneres promised that as soon as she had recovered, she would fly her and her mother out to "The Ellen Show" so that the two could dance together.
"All of us, our family and friends, are looking forward to see her dance on the 'Ellen' show," Campbell's mother emotionally said during the conference.
Campbell told DeGeneres via Skype that she was diagnosed with asthma when she was 14 years old and that she felt short of breath during the last year.
"In the summer, I just really couldn't keep up with friends so I went to see my family doctor and had a chest x-ray done. In September, they told me that it wasn't just asthma, that it was something more, and in October I was told that I needed a double lung transplant," she said.
Since sharing her story with the world through her website, the Ottawa native has inspired many Canadians to become organ donors and yesterday, she got the chance to express her appreciation during a press conference at Toronto's General Hospital.
"Giving someone like me a second chance, a gift of dancing again, a gift of life and I will honour that gift as long as I life," she said. "I've named my lungs Gratitude. Which is 'attitude' with a 'Grr,' which means the positive attitude in life, seeing things with a positive aspect and really being thankful for what I have received."
