PIONEERING
FOR mum Kate Dickinson and her baby daughter Mary, meeting liver donor Holly Thorpe was a truly magical moment.
Months earlier, Holly – who at that point did not know the Dickinsons – had selflessly stepped up to offer part of her liver to save Mary’s life.
In doing so, she became the UK’s first ever emergency altruistic living organ donor to give part of their liver to a stranger’s baby.
An emergency altruistic donor is a living person who donates an organ, such as part of their liver or a kidney, to someone they do not know.
And Holly’s noble actions mean the tiny tot, who had been close to death, now has a second chance at life.
Mum Kate says:
“Holly is our angel.
She’s our hero.
“Our lives would be very different now if it wasn’t for her. Mary wouldn’t be here with us.”
Mary was only a month old when her mum and dad
David, 45, noticed the whites of her eyes were yellow.
Worried, they took her to hospital – and within days she was on life support with acute liver failure. Devastated
Kate, 39, also mum to Daisy, eight, says: “We had to prepare ourselves for the fact that we might lose her.”
Mary was quickly offered a liver from a deceased donor.
But the family’s hopes were dashed when one of the arteries proved too big for her small body.
“One of the anaesthetists told us that waiting for a liver for such a small baby was like waiting for a unicorn’s liver,” music teacher Kate says.
On the suggestion of a surgeon, they launched a desperate last-ditch appeal on Facebook for a live donor. By now, Mary was so ill she was on a ventilator.
Kate says: “She didn’t have long left. I kept telling her to hold on.”
Meanwhile, midwife Holly, 38, was on holiday in Majorca, Spain, with husband Tom, 38, a company director, and their kids Alfie, 14, and Willow, nine, when she spotted the Facebook appeal shared by her colleagues. The family’s plight moved Holly, whose brother had been treated for a congenital heart condition at the same hospital when they were kids.
Holly met the stringent requirements for the donor to weigh under 50kg, be fit, healthy and on no medication, and decided to donate, with her husband’s complete support.
She says: “I had a really strong, really strange feeling that I might be able to help Mary. I really struggled with not being able to help my brother, so if I could help Mary and her family, I was determined to do so.”
Things moved very quickly. Five days later, Holly donated a “fist-sized” section of her liver in a six-hour operation at Leeds St James’s Hospital.
The organ was packed in ice and then transplanted into Mary at Leeds Children’s Hospital in a 10-hour procedure.
Holly was able to return home to York after a few days. It took six weeks for her to be able to potter around and three months to regain full strength – and her liver had regenerated within six months.
A few hours after the operation, Kate and David, a parts manager, were thrilled that Mary was showing signs of improving.
Kate says: “When Mary went into surgery, she was a deep orange colour because her jaundice was so bad and her urine was black. But within a few hours of the operation her colour began to change.”
Back at home in Hartlepool, County Durham, after four weeks in hospital, the tot had to isolate for three months, take up to 12 types of medication daily and visit the hospital weekly.
Doctors cannot say whether Mary’s new liver will last her whole life or need replacing, and she will always struggle to fight off coughs and colds because of immune suppression.
But her test results are “near perfect”, and she’s thriving at nine months old, as she approaches her first birthday – a milestone her parents fear she wouldn’t have reached if it weren’t for Holly.
Kate says: “Mary is an incredibly