The gift of life
New Zealand has low rates of organ donation. With a new bill seeking to increase them poised to become law, Piers Fuller talks to three people whose lives were changed by donors.
Lisa Erikson, of Blenheim, was given a new set of lungs in 2013
Eight years ago, Lisa Erikson couldn’t have imagined how her life would change.
Living in an earthquakeracked Christchurch, looking after a toddler and struggling to breathe, life was tough.
But a double-lung transplant in 2013 transformed her life.
Now living in Blenheim, the 39-year-old is fighting fit and happily bringing up her 11-yearold daughter, Miriana.
Erikson’s lung function started to fail shortly after having Miriana in 2008.
She was diagnosed a couple of years later with pulmonary arterial hypertension, which has no cure.
She says it was a harrowing experience living in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake, and she was existing in survival mode.
‘‘When you’re so sick, you have no choice but to just survive each day.
‘‘With a breathing difficulty, you never get a break from it. It was just like running a marathon every day. Every single breath, you had to think about taking it.’’
After trying various treatments, none of which were working, she was sent to Auckland to be assessed.
‘‘After that it all happened very quickly. Thank goodness, because I wasn’t in a very good space.’’
She received two new lungs, which work perfectly, leaving her enormously grateful.
She says she ‘‘stayed alive’’ for her daughter. ‘‘That is what made me fight every day to stay alive. I get to do all the normal mum things, I’m just cherishing the moments that we have.’’
She says it would be good if changes in the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill, which is about to become law, helped people become more aware of what could be donated.
‘‘There are still people who I tell I have had a double-lung transplant and they say, ‘I didn’t even think that was possible.’ ’’
Carterton farmer Alex Kyle had a heart transplant in 2010
When Alex Kyle’s heart was failing him, his family had to pick up the slack on the farm.
Almost a decade on, his transplanted heart is working faultlessly and Kyle likes nothing better than heading out to work on his vast hill country property with his 21-year-old son, Sam.
Sam may not have understood at the time what a big deal a heart transplant was, but he understands now what it has given him and his family – an extra decade of doing the things a boy gets to do with his dad.
‘‘It was pretty life-changing. It was probably better that it happened when I was 11 than now,’’ he says.
Alex Kyle, 54, does not dwell on the future and is not one to ponder ‘‘what-ifs’’.
But he says the system that delivered his fully functional heart is working well.
If there are changes made to how transplants are handled, he hopes New Zealand’s high standards will continue.
He continues to take antirejection medication, which can have detrimental side-effects, and he is circumspect about what the future may hold. ‘‘We’re here for a good time, not a long time.’’
After his transplant in March 2010, things got back to normal quite quickly. He was needed on the farm, and he was back into work within a few months. ‘‘I felt normal and just got on with it.’’
He says he has never been nervous about the organ being rejected by his body.
‘‘Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I don’t put a lot of thought into it.’’
His wife, Sarah, is a nurse and
was helpful in explaining any medical jargon and processes they came up against.
And if you’re wondering what happened to his old, faulty ticker?
‘‘It’s up in a cupboard collecting dust,’’ he says. ‘‘There’s a couple of pacemakers up there too.’’
Tracy Holmes of Hamilton was given a new liver in 1986
Tracy Holmes’ vivacious personality and lust for life may or may not be a result of her extraordinary gift, but either way, she’ll take it.
Holmes was just a child, 33 years ago, when she became this country’s first liver transplant recipient from a donor in the United Kingdom.
She’ll happily shout from the rooftops about organ donation if it will help other people who might find themselves in a similar position.
‘‘Every year I put it on Facebook, that I have made it another year. Please donate, please put a tick on your driver’s licence.’’
Holmes is happy to be the poster child for liver transplants in New Zealand. She hopes that the law changes will make a person’s wishes binding, so that their desire to donate organs cannot be overridden by family.
‘‘When you put that tick on your driver’s licence, you are of sound body and mind. You know when you’re doing that you have made that decision that you want to donate your organs.’’
Holmes doesn’t know who the donor was, but was told the child was 10 years old and had died in a car crash.
She still sends letters to the family, via the donation service in the UK. ‘‘I’m forever thankful to those people.
‘‘I’ve had an amazing life. I work fulltime . . . Apart from taking immunosuppressants, which I have for 33 years, I live a normal life.’’
She was just 10 and on death’s door when she was whisked off to the UK for the pioneering procedure.
‘‘When I got to England, they told Mum and Dad that I didn’t have very long to go.
‘‘I was very lucky that I got my liver within days of being put on the register, or I would have died.’’
Though the first transplant was rejected, the second one that same year was a success, and has continued to serve her to this day.
‘‘You wouldn’t know that I have had two liver transplants.
‘‘Life’s too short to not live it and, if anybody knows that, I do. I travel the world, I travel the country, I go camping, I do everything in life a normal person would do.’’