SO GRATEFUL TO ORGAN DONOR I’ve been given the greatest ever gift.. a new life

A CHRISTMAS Day present meant more than anything to Curtese Walters – for it amounted to the gift of life.

Desperately ill and in need of a liver transplant, she was overjoyed when doctors told her they had a donated organ.

Curtese, 30, an education assistant, was at home on Christmas Eve last year when the phone rang.

It was Birmingham City Hospital asking if she was ready for a liver transplant.

She said: “It was the best gift I could ever ask for.”

But she added it was “bittersweet” because: “I knew that while my family were celebrating and thrilled with their news, another family were grieving the loss of a loved one.”

Since she was 14 Curtese had suffered with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a liver disease.

Exciting

Affecting the flow of bile through the body, it gave her itchy, jaundiced skin, extreme tiredness and abdominal pain.

This time last year she was so ill she could barely move. Medics warned she was at risk of death by liver failure and would need a transplant. Her life was a round of pills, tests and check-ups.

A year ago today she was ready for bed with her husband Peter, 39, an accountant, when her luck changed.

Curtese said: “It was about 9pm when the phone rang. They apologised for calling so l ate on Christmas Eve but they’d found me a new liver and asked if I could go in.

“I stood there staring in shock for a moment before I told them, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ ”

Curtese said: “One minute I was getting ready for bed, the next I was in hospital planning my transplant. It was so exciting and a little overwhelming.”

She had been on the donor waiting list for two and a half weeks. At 9am on Christmas Day Curtese was taken to theatre for a ten-hour operation to replace her diseased liver with a new one.

She she knew very little about the person who donated their