School Speech

The year sevens at HNI have been doing a speech competition. We didn't all have to go into the house competition, but we did have to write a speech. Here is mine:

Imagine….you die in a car crash. The ambulance comes and the doctors lift your bloody body onto a stretcher. The policeman at the scene fishes around and in the midst of broken glass finds your wallet. Pulls out your shiny new driver’s licence. “donor”. Everything that happens next happens in an immense blur. Ambulance and police car rushing, hospital parking, screeching, wheeling your dead body into the huge grey building. Into a room, onto a bed, machinery. A pale nurse picks up a telephone and dials a number. After a while, your family comes in and cries, then they leave you to be dissected! First, the surgeons make sure you are totally brain-dead, then they cut you open straight through your skin, up your body. They examine your organs, which are still healthy. Now they cut them out! Despite being dead, you have saved a life. You may now rest in pieces.

So listen up, would you?

Organ donation is the process of surgically removing an organ or tissue from one person and placing it in another person's body. The person whose organs have been removed is usually brain-dead, and the operation is done to save another person’s life. Organs donated by dead donors include eyes, heart or heart valves, skin and pancreas. However, it is becoming more common to donate organs or parts of organs while still being alive. Kidneys are the most regular organs donated by living donors. Other organs that can be donated are parts of lung, liver or intestine.

The procedure of organ donation starts when the doctors suspect that the patient is brain-dead. They will carry out two brain-death assessments. The time of death for the person is when the second brain-death assessment is completed.  Sometime after the loved one’s family has been informed, the intensive care doctor will discuss donation. If the family agrees to donation, written permission about the organs and tissues they are comfortable with donating is given. After this, the donor coordinator from Organ Donation New Zealand is contacted and the transplant surgical team travel to the hospital where the donor is kept. The patient is transferred to the operating rooms while a ventilator continues to supply oxygen to the organs until they are surgically removed. Following the donation, the family can spend time with their loved one if they wish.

In New Zealand, the time to officially decide to donate is when the person first gets their driver's licence. This information will be showed on the driver’s licence by the single word, ‘donor’.

Despite the gross, disgusting truth about this whole process, it saves others who are suffering greater than you. So would you? Why not think about donating when you are older, to save someone who you truly love?

I'm proud of my speech because my timing was very close to 3 minutes and I always wanted to do something different than the rest of the class.

  

	STRUCTURE
1	There is an introduction to the topic.
2	The introduction tells the reader what the writer’s point of view on the topic is.
3	Each reason for the writer’s point of view is backed up by other information.
4	There is a new paragraph for each new reason.
5	All the reasons given in the argument are put in a sensible order.
6	The argument ends with a conclusion.
7	The conclusion restates the main points made in the argument.