By Aaron Comeaux
I don't usually search for this kind of video or any videos on a regular basis. I found this video to be very touching. I’m sure that the person who made this video wanted to have this exact effect. This video is about a woman that is in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. Her name is Leigh Buckley and lives in Derry, New Hampshire. She is a thirty two year old married woman and a mother of two cute little girls. The little girls are around the ages of 2 years and 6 months old. This will be an important fact as I get deeper into this essay. Leigh has been going through Leukemia treatment for the disease. Leukemia strikes about 10 times as many adults as children and the last hope for the patients are bone marrow transplants (Mask, Allen). The video is a little over three minutes long.
The beginning of the video starts with a happy picture of Leigh and her husband. In this picture Leigh has a full face and a full head of hair, which probablly implies that the picture was taken of the couple before the disease took over or before the treatments began. While this picture is being shown, the narrator is explaining that Leigh suddenly found out one day that she was being diagnosed with this disease and would have to start treatments immediately. Right after the picture of Leigh and her husband, the video shows a picture of the older daughter and then a picture of the younger daughter. The video goes on to show the mother (still having a full head of hair at the beginning of treatment) in her hospital bed, reading a book to one of her daughters, while explaining to her daughter that “mommy has cancer”. This is definitely pretty sad, if you think about the possibility of the daughters growing up without a mother. This is the moment that the video really starts to play on the viewer’s emotions.
The video goes on to show the stats for how many people need bone marrow transplants yearly, which is 25,000 people. The video shows Leigh feeding the 6 month old baby daughter with a bottle quickly after that statistic. Then it shows that only thirty percent of tose 25,000 people actually find a matching donor within their family and that the ramaining seventy percent have to search a worldwide database, looking for their “miracle match”. The video tells the audience that Leigh is one of the seventy percent looking outside of her family for a donor. The next clip in the video that is shown is of Leigh in the hospital bed again. In this clip, the nurse is messing with the I-V bag and Leigh has no hair and is much thinner. She looks miserable there. All of a sudden, like a look into the past, the next clip is of Leigh and her daughter at some kind of concert or something like that while having fun and enjoying theirselves. Immediately after this clip, there is one of Leigh during her treatment talking to her daughter. The video shows a couple more photos of her and her family during the treatment and back before the cancer. The next clip is of Leigh showing the camera all of her i-v’s in her arm (which is about 5 of them) and calling them her jewelry. By this time she is so accustomed to having them in her arm that she literally doesn’t live without them. Leigh points out a certain one and calls it her “own personal airplane” and that it is Julia’s (one of her daughters) favorite. This is showing some of the hardships of having to deal with the disease while tieing it in again to her daughter and the viewer’s feelings.
Leigh goes on to show us that she is putting lotion on her head. She tells the audience that there is a first time for everything, even hand and body lotion to be applied to a woman’s head L. This shows another one of the hardships of having the disease. The narrator goes on to tell the audience that the family put all their cares,anxieties and fears up to the throne of god and that there is a tremendous amount of peace there. This implies that the family is a good, Christian family and is worth the time and efforts that are being put into finding a transplant for Leigh. The video ends with Leigh and her husband kissing eachother while she is on the hospital bed while the narrator is telling the audience of the bone marrow drive being held at a local church.
A law of contemporary art is as follows: once a technology is in place, an art form will invariably develop out of it (Antwan, Robert). This video is art in itsself. I find this video to be somewhat a mode of advertisement for the family and the cause. The message and purpose of the video was for the aid of Leigh and people needing a bone marrow transfer. The video accomplished what it was meant for because Leigh ended up getting her bone marrow donor and the family is now happy again.
Bibliography
Atwan, Robert. Convergences: Second Edition. Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2005.
Mask, Allen. "Bone Marrow Drive Could Find Lifesaver for Lukemia Patients. " Health & Life. Capital Broadcasting Co. 2007.
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