‘WIFE’S TRANSPLANT ALSO SAVED MY LIFE’ – VINNIE
VINNIE JONES has said that his late wife’s heart transplant three decades ago “saved my life, not just hers”.
The former Wales football international-turned-hardman actor’s wife Tanya suffered heart failure after giving birth aged 21.
However, she received the “fantastic gift” of a new heart from the family of a 10-year-old boy who died in a car accident in Germany.
In an interview with BBC Inside Out, Jones said: “Tans had a transplant after her heart collapsed giving birth and we lived with that for ever more. It was a fantastic gift that we were given.
“If you kneel down in front of the pearly gates and say: ‘Give us five more years with her, give us 10 years’ – you take that. We had 32.”
Jones, 55, thanked the family who “gave us a new life”.
Asked whether the transplant had saved his wife, he replied: “It saved my life, not just hers.”
Mother-of-two Tanya died in July last year, aged 53, after suffering long-term cancer.
In an interview after her death an emotional Jones ruled out ever falling in love again, declaring: “She was the light of my life. I will never be with anyone else.”
Speaking of her last days, Jones said: “In that last week of her life when the doctors said there were no more treatments, I never told her she was dying. We never spoke of that, I didn’t want her to know. She has never ever slept one night in hospital without me there. I have always been by her side.”
The Snatch star is now backing a change in the law which will mean the majority of people in England will automatically be considered organ donors from May, unless they choose to opt out.
The law already exists in Wales. He said: “I think it’s fantastic. astic. My feeling is that more people would want to donate than not donate nate so the turnaround is the bettter option. I know it’s going to o save lives.”
It is estimated that the opttout method, known as Max ax and Keira’s law, will lead to an additional 700 transplants each year by 2023.
Keira Ball, nine, saved four lives, including fellow nine-yeare-yearold Max Johnson, after her father allowed doctors to use her organs for transplants following a car crash in 2017.
The full interview will air as part of BBC Inside Out Yorkshire, re, on BBC One on Monday at 7.30pm. pm.