Five
It’s the toughest decision you’ll ever have to make.
Your mother is dying of cancer and only has a short time to live. There is an acute shortage of donor organs and her best chance of survival is for you to allow surgeons to remove half of your liver and transplant it into her.
If you agree, there’s a chance you might die – and it may not even save your mum’s life.
If you don’t, you will watch your mother deteriorate and die.
So what do you do?
This isn’t a work of fiction or a TV drama. It’s the kind of terrible, heartbreaking dilemma faced by families every day at the liver transplant unit of St James’ Hospital in Leeds, UK, where surgeons are carrying out pioneering, life-saving work to the patients on their transplant list.
Live adult-to-adult transplants like these are the last resort for these patients who have less than eighteen months to live. The cutting edge, but risky, surgery requires healthy donors to give up over half of their liver in order to save the life of a loved one (It’s a procedure that can only be done because the liver is a unique organ in that it regenerates itself and will regrow to its full capacity in about three months).
It’s an awful decision, but with the chronic shortage of organ donors in the UK - where 25% of people on the waiting list die before a cadaveric liver becomes available, sometimes it is the only option.
True North spent a year with the transplant team following the heart-rending stories of patients in search of an organ - and with donors prepared to risk their lives to save a loved one. These are the stories at the heart of Extraordinary People: The Man Who Shared His Liver.