Teen gets gift of a lung life
MPs decide today on opt out organ donation law
It’s Tippi in The Birds ACTRESS Dakota Johnson may tower over her grandma, but Tippi Hedren is still a Hollywood giant.
Dakota, 29, whose mother is 88-year-old Tippi’s actress daughter Melanie Griffith, 61, took her gran to the premiere of her new film, Suspiria.
It’s a horror about a dance company run by witches, but is it as scary as her gran’s biggest hit, The Birds? Doubt it. Dakota, Tippi and Mel AFTER a life-saving lung transplant, Siobhan Murray gives a big thumbs-up, showing the joy and hope organ donation brings.
Today, MPs will vote on an op-out organ donation system that will help thousands more like her.
Siobhan, 16, was born with cystic fibrosis that clogged up her lungs meaning she was in a wheelchair and needed oxygen to breathe.
After a transplant in Newcastle last year her life was transformed.
Mum Sue, 46, said: “She was out of intensive care within three days, walking within four. All the JOY Siobhan and thumbs-up after op
tubes and machines she’d relied on for survival were simply gone.” Our Change The Law For Life Campaign led to a Private Member’s Bill on an opt-out system. It has a third reading today. Sue, 46, said: “Waiting for a suitable organ to save their child’s life is any parent’s worst nightmare. An opt-out system, where you have to actively say you don’t want to donate your organs, would save thousands of lives.”
Siobhan has gone from strength to strength since her operation, sitting her GCSEs and going on her first family holiday with mum Sue, dad Joe, 50, and sisters Lauren, 19, and Clodagh, 13.
In September, they flew from their home in Dublin back to Newcastle to do the Great North Run, raising more than £5,000 for The Sick Children’s Trust, which provided somewhere for the family to stay during Siobhan’s treatment.
Sue said: “Sometimes I have to pinch myself this is all real.
“It’s incredible to think that we owe this all to a stranger.”