Lynne Holt must have one of the toughest and most rewarding jobs in the North-East. Health and Education Editor Barry Nelson talks to her about the race against time to save North-East lives

AS a transplant co-ordinator Lynne Holt’s children are used to their mother talking about life and death issues over the breakfast cornflakes. They are also used to her working all night – and sometimes into the next day as well.

“The other weekend when I was on call I didn’t get home until 1am. The phone rang at 2.30am to say a donor was available.”

Lynne got up and alerted the potential recipient, the organ retrieval team, and two surgical and nursing teams before going back to her office in the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle.

By the time she went to bed at 3pm on Sunday afternoon she had had several more donor offers, and been working continuously for more than 34 hours.

And that’s not unusual.

Lynne, 56, has been involved in heart and lung transplantation since 1979, firstly at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, and for the past 26 years as transplant co-ordinator, part of the heart transplant team at the Freeman Hospital.

She has helped hundreds of patients – and their families – cope with the nerve-wracking business of waiting for a new heart or lung.

SHARING in the joy of successful transplants, she has also had to comfort the relatives of people who didn’t make it.

“My four children are all used to their mum talking about life and death,” says Lynne, matter-of-factly.

“I remember when their granddad died, they asked me did they take his heart?”

After spending 33 years working in transplantation, Lynne is passionate about getting the message across that everyone needs to sign up to the Organ Donor Register, or at least talk to their family about their wishes.

“We perform between 70 and 80 heart and lung transplants every year at the Freeman but we usually have more than 100 adults and children on the waiting list.

“We are doing fewer heart transplants these days and the number of lung operations is fairly static. The truth is that we are not going to reach the Government’s target of a 50 per cent increase in transplants by 2013, unless people change their attitude.”

Lynne takes me up to the paediatric intensive care unit in the impressive new Institute of Transplantation.

“We have got four babies waiting for new hearts at the moment,” she says.

Scarlett Ungurs is an 18-month-old baby who has been through the mill.

She developed major heart problems when she was six months old and has been in and out of the intensive care unit at the Freeman. Now she is waiting for a new heart, kept alive by an artificial pump, plumbed into her chest.

Sitting on her dad’s lap, her eyes follow us as we gather around the bedside.

My own eyes are drawn to the sight of Scarlett’s blood pulsing in and out of the dangling tubes.

Her dad, Darren Ungurs, from Shiremoor, North Tyneside , explains that Scarlett has so far had to endure 16 operations on her heart.

“The staff here are wonderful, fantastic people,” he says. “She wouldn’t be here at all without them.” He adds, poignantly: “I am so desperate for her to get a new heart.”

AS we walk back to her office, Lynne tells me that between the Freeman and Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London – the only two UK centres which carry out baby heart transplants – there are usually around ten babies waiting for new hearts.

Any blood group baby heart is acceptable, because babies’ immune systems are not usually developed enough to cause a problem. But there are simply not enough to go around.

Lynne recalls how she felt when a donation from an unnamed family allowed surgeons at the Freeman to perform the UK’s first baby heart transplant on Kaylee Davidson, from Washington , Tyne and Wear, in October 1987.

Kaylee, who was five months old at the time, would have died without the gift of life from a stranger.

“That night will stay with me for ever. I was so impressed that there was a father who had the courage to say yes, you can have my baby’s heart to save another child’s life. Twentyfive years ago that was so unique, so brave.”

Kaylee is now 25.

So how did Lynne get into this very specialised line of work?

“I can remember getting a nurse’s uniform for Christmas, that was probably how it started,” she says.

Lynne’s parents are Canadian and she was born in Montreal.

“My father was an airline pilot and we lived all over the world. I came to the UK when I was 15 and finished my schooling in Henley-on-Thames, which was my 12th different school.”

Lynne qualified as a nurse in London and she managed to get a position at the UK’s first heart transplant centre at Papworth, in Cambridgeshire.

“It was an exciting time. They had just done their third ever UK transplant.

I suppose I was in the right place at the right time.”

Lynne worked with some of the pioneer surgeons, including Sir Terrence English, and it was one of them – Chris McGregor – who asked Lynne to move up to the North-East and help set up Britain’s third heart transplant unit at the Freeman.

The move up to the North-East was, in a sense, a homecoming for Lynne.

“My grandparents emigrated from the North-East to Canada. My grandfather was from Wallsend and was professor of music and my grandmother was an opera singer from Consett ,”

she says.

She has never regretted the move and now regards the region as her home.

“I live ten minutes away from my favourite beach. I love it here.”

Lynne wouldn’t want to do any other job, but admits it can be very tough, emotionally.

“I do fill up sometimes. I used to say there was something the matter with my contact lens. Now with the passing years, I don’t use that excuse any more.”

  •  To join the Organ Donor Register ring 0300-1232323, visit organdonation.nhs.uk or text SAVE to 84118, and discuss your wishes now with your family