The fighting fit
KARATE black belt Kevin Mashford cuddles his youngest son Luke and feels he has been blessed not once, but twice.
For both he and his little boy are only here thanks to an incredible gift from a stranger.
Three years ago Kevin, 36, was told he had just months to live after suffering heart failure.
As his organs started to fail and he struggled for every breath, he was told only a transplant could save him.
He feared leaving his wife Jo, 38, and young sons Josh and Liam, then seven and four, without a husband and father – and never having the third baby they longed for.
But after an anxious sixweek wait, a match was found and Kevin was given a new heart in a complex 13-hour operation.
Watching the 15-monthold toddle across the living room of their home near Bristol, Kevin says: “Luke is such a special little boy.
“He’s always cheerful and smiling, and we’re so fortunate to have him.
“Without the untold generosity of my donor giving up his organs, Luke would never have been born.”
Kevin, boss of a project management f i rm, had suffered a lifetime of health problems when his condition began to deteriorate in 2011.
Coma
He was born with his heart the wrong way round and needed multiple operations, including procedures to fit three pacemakers and two defibrillators.
Kevin was even given the last rites aged eight after doctors went in to repair what they thought was a hole in the heart and discovered the true extent of his problem.
“I was in a coma for two weeks but pulled through,” he says. “Then when I was 17 I needed another major operation and that’s when I started going into heart failure.”
Kevin, who also suffered a mini stroke on his 27th birthday, is one of half a million Brits who suffer from heart failure, where the heart does not have enough strength to pump blood around the body efficiently.
His poor health affected his ability to be a father. Kevin says: “One night I watched Jo carry the two boys upstairs and thought, ‘I should be doing that’.
“But I was so weak I could barely lift one of them. It felt like I was wearing a lead suit all the time and even brushing my teeth or taking a shower left me exhausted. One of the arteries in my heart had closed over, and my liver and kidneys were failing.
“I knew that Jo wanted another child but I already felt Liam was missing out on so much with me being so ill, so it was something we pushed to one side.”
Kevin was placed on the organ donor list in January 2012.
He says: “We tried to explain to the boys that I might need a transplant. Josh was just seven and when the phone went one night he asked if it was someone calling about my new heart. We’d always tried to shield him from the fact someone had to die, so explained to him that getting a transplantp was a bit like recycling, that someone getsg a new heart that works, then someonesomeo else gets another one. “But t then he turned to m me and asked, ‘ ‘How did the first ever person to need a new heart get one?’ It was a real c chicken and egg qu question so I had to explain that some someone had to die