'Their gratitude is so humbling'

Now transplant staff are working to tell people about the impact organ donation can have. Barry Nelson reports.

AT first neither of them could say anything. Two years after his wife had died in the intensive care unit at Middlesbrough General, Michael Short was finally face to face with Jim, a kidney patient who had been given a new lease of life through her death.

After the ice was broken, at the annual memorial service held at Newcastle Cathedral for families who give and families who receive organs for transplant, Michael joked that Lily's kidney might not be any good to him because of her fondness for Bacardi.

There was an awkward pause and then Jim cracked up and said: "Bacardi's my favourite drink as well."

The two men have stayed in touch ever since and the father-of-two takes comfort from the fact that two other people benefited from his wife's organ donation - a deaf-mute man from Berwick who got a kidney and a girl student who is now a doctor working in America who received Lily's liver.

But too few families are prepared to think of others when a loved one dies in intensive care with intact organs and nationally, the situation is beginning to cause concern in transplant circles.

The total number of transplants carried out in the UK up to October 8 this year are 1,611, down on last year's total of 1,756 for the same period.

Fifty-two patients are still on the South Tees Hospital transplant waiting list. So far this year, 24 have received transplants locally and nine donations have been made, both down on the same period last year. Against this worrying background, the total number of patients waiting for transplants is continuing to grow.

Latest figures show that just under 5,000 patients are waiting for a kidney in the UK, with another 700 waiting for other organs.

Six years after his wife's death, Michael is now a passionate advocate of organ donation, giving talks throughout the North-East and recently appearing on John Peel's quirky Saturday morning Radio Four programme Home Truths. So what changed his mind?

A passionate Middlesbrough fan, Lily Short collapsed during a Premiership match in October 1996 and suffered a devastating brain haemorrhage.

Despite efforts to revive her - Michael remembers her asking him for a last cigarette before she lost consciousness - Mrs Short was declared dead after specialists carried out extensive tests on her brain stem.

It was then that the couple's elder daughter, Lesley, who carries a donor card, mentioned organ donation.

"I didn't know anything about it until then," says Michael, 61, who lives in Billingham. "At first, I said I didn't like the idea but I met the transplant co-ordinator from the Freeman Hospital and I started to come round to the idea."

"I liked the fact that they said she would be treated with great respect."

After a few years, Michael wrote to Jim, enclosing a photograph of Lily, suggesting that they meet.

When it finally happened, the two were initially lost for words. "At first, he couldn't speak and I couldn't speak. We were both filled with sadness because we knew that someone had died to give them life," says Michael. But what struck him most of all after that momentous meeting was a feeling of pride that his wife's death had not been in vain.

"When you see the gratitude of these people it is humbling. They are over the moon to have been given another chance," he says.

Now he confesses that when he attends funerals, he can't help thinking about the perfectly good organs which so often go to waste. "I tell all my friends about carrying the card and when I go to funerals, when the coffin goes into the crematorium or goes into the ground, I just think what a terrible waste. I can't help it."

Tracey Ryder, South Tees Hospital's recently-appointed donor liaison sister, could do with a few more like Michael Short and his family.

A very experienced intensive care sister, Tracey has been given the job of trying to increase the flagging rate of organ donation in the large chunk of the North-East covered by the Middlesbrough trust.

One of 21 donor liaison sisters appointed around the UK, courtesy of a £3m cash injection by the Government-funded agency UK Transplant, Tracey knows she has a tough job on her hands.

"The transplant waiting list is spiralling out of control and donation numbers have declined," says Tracey.

No one really knows why the number of donations has fallen but Tracey suspects the fall-out from the Alder Hey organ retention scandal may have had an effect, even though it had nothing to do with organ transplantation.

"Over a three month period this year, we followed six potential donors but only one donated organs and we have got to get that rate of donation up," says Tracey, who spends much of her time working with the families of potential donors and promoting organ donation.

"I took a look at our records and in 1999-2000 there was a 55 per cent consent rate among potential donor families. In 2000-2001 we only had a third giving consent," she says.

While she detects some signs of improvement, there is clearly a long way to go to restore previous levels of organ donation. Tracey feels very strongly that families must make their own minds up without undue pressure being placed on them.

"It is not my job to coerce people. I wouldn't want people to leave the hospital and say I only did it because she talked me into it," she says. "You have to give families the information they need so they can make an informed choice. You also have to try to be balanced. While I have met lots of people who have benefited from organ donation you always have to consider the feelings of donor families," she adds.

Some of the strongest opposition to organ donation comes from daughters when their mother has just died. Another problem area is with local Muslim families where there is a tradition of early burial after death, an insistence of burying an intact body and little awareness of organ donation.

Tracey is hoping to organise a speaking tour of secondary schools and universities in the region to raise the profile of organ donation among the next generation. "We need to get young people at least talking about organ donation," she says.

She is also hoping to meet up with Asian community leaders to try to improve the low donation rate among ethnic minority families. Tracey will highlight the relatively high number of Asians on the national transplant waiting list. Up to October 8 this year there were 849 people of Asian origin on the waiting list for transplants, a disproportionately high number compared to the general proportion.

And Asian patients also have problems in getting good tissue matches from English donors, making them less likely to have succesful transplants.

Another area Tracey is looking at is whether family involvement in the battery of tests which determine whether someone is brain dead will help in the process of letting go.

"Sometimes we have relatives observing the brain stem tests. We think it may help families come to terms with what has happened," says Tracey, who plans to carry out research in this area.

But the last word goes to Michael Short. There is one thing about Jim he's unsure about. Jim is a Newcastle fan who now has a Boro fan's kidney.

"I don't know whether Lily would have liked that," he laughs.

* Ring 0845 6060400 to contact the Organ Donation Information line or visit the website at

What it's like to be waiting

KEVIN Murray is one of the kidney patients on South Tees Hospital's transplant waiting list an d a donation can't come too quickly as far as he's concerned.

Kevin, 44, has had to be connected to a kidney machine three times a week for the last 15 months after suffering kidney failure.

Each time it takes about three-and-a-half hours to cleanse his system and allow him to live a relatively normal life.

"Life is very restricted. I had to give up work and I can forget about holidays," says Kevin, who is hoping he will soon be receiving a transplant. "It makes you tired a lot of the time.

"A lot of the other kidney patients at the dialysis unit at Darlington are a lot older than me."

So far only one patient has had a transplant. "He hasn't come back so I am assuming it's worked," he says.

Anything that can be done to increase the number of transplants has Kevin's full support. He lives in hope of it happening to him.

"I've got a case half-packed ready to go if I get the call and I always carry my mobile."