Heartfelt petition followed by gift of life
Transplant patient gets new organs a month after urging people to be donors
Less than a month after South Auckland woman Jessica Manning petitioned the Government to make organ donation mandatory, her own life changed.
In early September the 25-year-old received a call at 6:30am telling her she had 1 and a half hours to get to Auckland Hospital to have a heart and liver transplant.
Doctors had previously given Manning two years to live unless she had a combined heart and liver transplant. She was born with six heart conditions and later developed severe liver disease.
She had already been waiting 17 months for the transplant when the call came.
Supported by her family, she waited at the hospital for the organs to arrive.
By 10am she was in surgery and her family had another stressful wait while she was operated on for 20 hours.
It was the longest operation her surgeon had performed because Manning lost so much blood. She required 22 litres to be replaced during the surgery.
Manning then spent five days on life support, 53 days in Auckland City Hospital’s ICU and another 10 days on a ward.
She was still recovering in ICU and had started taking her first steps about 28 days into her recovery when a complication saw her diaphragm tear causing fluid to move up around her heart.
During surgery to repair the hole fluid rushed up strangling her heart, causing a cardiac arrest.
That was the scariest time for her family. It took doctors 20 minutes to massage her heart back to life and tests were carried out to make sure she was not brain dead, she said.
The cardiac arrest also set back her recovery and she suffered muscle memory loss. She had to learn how to move her legs again, sit up and even move her neck. She was again put on life support for another two days.
But three months since surgery, she’s walking, going to the gym four times a week, can do her own make up and walk up a flight of stairs all without getting out of breath.
When she was free from regular hospital visits, Manning planned to travel and eventually hoped to study to fulfil her dream of being a teacher.
However, the fact her new organs arrived within a month of starting the petition calling for mandatory organ donation and speaking publicly about it was not lost on Manning.
She has wondered if the donor had always planned to donate or had only recently had the conversation after the petition’s publicity.
“I think it was all the awareness out there and getting everyone to talk . . .
I think that’s why there are so many more donors this year because people had actually talked about it. Jessica Manning
It was 50/50 — people were either negative about it or positive about it but it still got people to talk whether they were donors or not. I think that’s why there are so many more donors this year because people had actually talked about it.
“I’m also very thankful to not only donors, but everybody who donates blood because if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have survived that transplant.”
Manning is one of 10 finalists for the Herald’s New Zealander of the Year, for opening up the tough conversation around making organ donation mandatory.