Organ donation

The [local hospital], where she [wife] was first, they were unbelievable. They bent over backwards. I was quite surprised in fact that the nursing team there, literally if the nurse who was scheduled to look after Jen, if she wanted to go and go to the loo, or have a cup of tea or whatever, she couldn’t go until there was another nurse available to take over. So at all times there was a nurse by her bedside.

And, again, the same when we reached the [city hospital]. It was a lot more high tech there than the equipment they had at the [local hospital]. And again the staff there were just absolutely brilliant. The doctors and the nursing staff, any questions we had they went to great pains to explain, because there’s all this massive machinery around and they went to great pains to explain, “Right, that’s her blood pressure, that’s this, that’s that.” So we could, if we went away from the bedside and came back, the first thing we’d do is look at the screen and we’d know exactly how she was getting on. Because they had taken the trouble and they didn’t make a mystery of anything.

But no, as I said, they made sure that, on every occasion, we knew what was going on. If they had to ask us to leave for any reason, when we came back in they’d say, “Right, we asked you to go because we had to do a, b, c,” whatever. And obviously it’s not nice for outsiders to be there watching while they’re doing their tasks. But you certainly couldn’t fault the care on either side. They were both absolutely fantastic.
 

We had thousands of questions afterwards, but nothing actually at the time. But the hospital were absolutely brilliant and never failed to answer all our questions. We had a meeting fairly soon after we’d lost Martin, where it was explained to us that he’d had this congenital condition. And then we had a further meeting, probably two years later, because we had all the questions that were just niggling us, and they never failed to welcome us at any time.

My questions after we lost Martin were mainly in relation to the condition. He’d collapsed so suddenly but, as a mother, you beat yourself up. You find something to feel guilty about because he was so young and healthy. So I thought, “Should I have known? Should I have noticed something? Was there something I missed?” Things like that.

I then worried that he hadn’t been seen quick enough because we don’t live near a big hospital. I was assured afterwards that he would actually have been brain dead long, long before he ever reached hospital.

The consultant drew diagrams and gave me lots and lots of explanations that absolutely convinced me. But I obviously did have concerns at the time that we hadn’t done something right, or even they hadn’t done something right.

But I had no concerns over the care that Martin received. As a donor, he received equally good care as he would as a patient who they were trying to save, to live. Because those organs were just as important as if he was being treated to live. And as the co-ordinator [specialist nurse] once said to me, when she accompanied Martin to the operating theatre on the evening that the retrieval took place, he will be looked after just the same as if he was having any other operation because those organs are very, very precious to another person. So there’s no concern that, because Martin had actually died, that he wasn’t going to be treated in exactly the same way as anybody else.
 

There was a young doctor who basically was delivering me the news that he thought that it was highly unlikely John would survive what had happened. And that’s some pretty stark information, a) to receive but for the doctor to give it.

And throughout the whole time that any medical people spoke to me, they kept eye contact with me. Which actually at the time I suppose I didn’t necessarily really think about that, but afterwards realised just how important that had been. Nobody evaded my gaze. Nobody evaded my questions. They answered me as honestly as they could, given the information at different stages, the information they had, to know what they could, you know, if they knew something they would tell me. I was kept informed and involved throughout the whole situation.

They [doctors] told us that it would be very dignified, that it wouldn’t be frightening. [My son] was also in the room, and obviously for him, well I hadn’t intended for him to be in there. I think all parents want to protect and I felt that it would be better if he wasn’t there, until one of the medical team said to me that, whilst I knew my son better than they did, had I considered that if [my son] went from the hospital and his dad was, although unconscious still alive, the next time he would see me I would be telling him his Dad had died. And I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I just wanted him away from the pain of it all.

But I will be eternally grateful to that lady because I think, from [my son’s] point of view, he saw everything, really, the whole way through and was with his Dad when he passed away. And it was what they promised. It was dignified. It wasn’t frightening, and John just slipped, literally slipped away. And we could then just say our final goodbyes and come away.

So I have a lot to be grateful for generally. And I didn’t necessarily see it like that at the time. And I think that we were able to adjust to what had happened the best way that we could. And certainly from [my son’s] point of view there was no mystery. He understood what happened and was with his Dad to the end. They were very close, John was the main carer while I was at work. So they did have a very close relationship.
 

Went over to the [name of] hospital, bearing in mind that we were like, ‘oh well, he’ll be fine’ because they said that they’ll take him if they can do something for him. And we still didn’t, nobody had mentioned anything about head injuries, or still didn’t really, we walked in blind because we didn’t know what was going on.

Walked into [name of] hospital, and it was a Sunday. There wasn’t many people around. Walked into [name of] hospital and there was this doctor rushing around, like quite quickly, walking quite quickly in white. So we just said, “Oh, my name’s Liz, Liz [surname], and my husband has been brought here. Can you tell me anything or can you point me in the right direction?”

And he just said, “Well, I don’t know what you want us to do. He’s got a massive bleed on his brain and I don’t think there’s much we can do about it.”

So I looked at my sister and obviously I burst into tears. But there was nobody else around. And my sister looked at me and we were like, “Oh no.” So we just stood there for a minute and then this nurse appeared from, I can’t remember where, but she just appeared and she just got hold of us and said, “Look, just come in this room and I’ll try and explain it to you.”

So she just sat us down and said that they’d took him into the operating theatre. He’d had a scan on arrival and they’d found a massive bleed in his head. They didn’t quite know what was going on, but they’d took him into the operating theatre to see if they could sort it out.

So they took us to this other room and just made us tea and everything and the nurse did apologise and she said that some doctors are busy, abrupt or whatever, not really got much, you know, patience. And she was really, really kind and caring. She gave us as much information as she had.

The doctors were kind of quick and quite abrupt. I know that you don’t want people to give you false information but when Rick died, it was, you knew that they had a job to do and you were trying to reason with it, that that was their job, they were giving you that information. But to me they could have done it in maybe a bit of a gentler way for want of a better word.