‘Without them I

IN 2016, Ellie Lacey was young, and healthy.

She’d just come back from a cycling trip around Europe and from Uganda, where she organises a charity marathon. But she was feeling sluggish.

Her friends said her spark had gone.

She suspected it was malaria, but doctors told her there was something seriously wrong with her liver.

She’d been admitted to UHW and given daily and regular tests.

While doctors downplayed her condition to her, they were speaking to specialists trying to work out exactly what was wrong.

On January 9, 2017, Ellie was rushed to the Royal Free Hospital in London. fit

Doctors tried everything but said their only remaining option was a liver transplant. She was put on the top of the super urgent transplant list.

Then her health went downhill rapidly.

As her organs began to fail, her family were being tested but none were a match.

On Friday, January 13, her husband was taken to one side and told she had 48 hours to live. There was nothing to do but wait. That evening her transplant coordinator woke her, held her hand and told her there was a liver.

She remembers the smile on her husband’s face and him promising her they would have ice cream when she was better.

The next thing she remembered was coming round after surgery.

What was in her mind then, now and forever will be is her donor.

She was given three pieces of information about them – she was a woman, in her 60s and had died of a natural brain injury such as a stroke or aneurysm.

“The feelings the other side are the most intense that I know I will ever experience in my life.

Ellie’s was one of the incredible stories we featured in our “Three Million Patients” – a celebration of the NHS at 70.

“To know that not only hundreds of people in the NHS came together to save my life, but that I am alive because one person signed the organ donation register.

“It’s an intensity of emotion that I will never be able to explain it to anybody.”

Recipients can write to their donor anonymously, which she has, admitting she rewrites the letter in her mind every day.