Please find me a heart
Heart boy family’s plea ahead of vote on organ donation
encourage people to start talking about donation and sharing their wishes.” The Mirror has been campaigning for the opt-out system, where consent to donate is assumed unless people specify otherwise. The current law means that life-saving organs are not used unless the deceased has signed the NHS Organ Donation Register, and the family agree to donate. But Abbie, from Bournemouth, Dorset, says bereaved parents often feel too crippled by grief to make a decision moments after the death of their child. “My hope is that parents think about whether they would want to donate their child’s organs beforehand. Then, if anything horrible was to happen, they would have already made that decision.
“So, at the time, they would already know they want to donate rather than having to make that decision on the spot when they are already going through such a horrible time.”
Oscar has dilated cardiomyopathy – an enlarged heart – the same condition suffered by Mirror boy Max Johnson, 10, who fronted our campaign to change the donation law.
Max is now thriving after receiving a donor heart last year, and Abbie and husband Josh hope any day to hear that Oscar will be given the same gift of live.
Oscar contracted the superbug clostridium difficile earlier this week but has pulled through at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
Relieved Abbie said: “He is OK. We think he is starting to bounce back. His heartbeat has gone down again and he is looking a lot happier, so we are just really hoping that it looks good, for now.” Oscar is hanging on to life thanks to the drug milrinone, which allows blood to flow more easily through the veins, reducing pressure on his heart. Abbie has quit her part-time job and stopped her biology degree to stay at his bedside. The rest of the family – Oscar’s dad, factory machine operator Josh, and his brother Jack, four – visit him as often as they can.
There are currently 6,163 people on the active transplant waiting list, including 179 children. Oscar is one of 36 children waiting for a heart. Last year, 426 patients died on the transplant waiting list.
This included 17 children, with seven waiting for a heart. APPEAL Mirror this week