Such a sister

LYNNE Bradley thought her son Paul had a virus. He was looking off colour, so she took him to the doctor's. When her GP rang back at teatime, seven-year-old Paul was out playing on his bike. The phone call was to turn their world upside down.

"He said Paul had end-stage kidney failure and I had to take him to hospital straight away," said Lynne, who lives in the Leeman Road area of York. "I couldn't believe it. He was off colour but he didn't seem to be that ill."

The family went to St James's Hospital in Leeds that night and Paul had his first dialysis treatment.

They were told that Paul had a fairly uncommon genetic condition, hyperoxaluria, which causes stony deposits affecting the body's ability to process waste and which eventually leads to organ failure. The only cure would be for a liver and kidney transplant.

"We were in shock for weeks," said Lynne, a social worker at York Hospital. Paul went on the transplant waiting list and began dialysis three times a week at St James's, which caused him to miss a lot of school.

For the next 18 months, the family's life was on hold: they couldn't go on holiday in case they missed the chance of a suitable donor.

Then one night, at 3am, the phone rang with the news they were longing for. Donor organs were available in Birmingham. The family drove through the night and reached the hospital by 6.30am. Paul had dialysis and then endured a 15-hour operation to receive a new liver and kidney. He spent three weeks in intensive care, and while the new liver began to function properly, the kidney would not, so Paul still needed dialysis.

It was five months before it "bedded in", after the family visited Dr Lee-Ping Hann who tried magnet therapy.

Lynne said: "We don't know whether it was the therapy or whether the kidney would have started to work anyway. But we were willing to try anything to stop Paul having to go back on dialysis."

For the next few years, the family relaxed back into normal life. Paul returned to school, enjoyed playing football with his mates, and Lynne threw herself into her career.

But at the back of their minds they feared the new kidney would cause a problem. When doctors told them that it was starting to deteriorate, family and friends came forward for tests to see if they could be a "live donor".

Paul's elder sister Leanne proved to be the perfect match. The 21-year-old shop assistant, who is training in beauty and massage therapy, said: "Everybody had been tested but nobody was a match. I went to the doctor and asked what blood group I was. He said it was the same as Paul's. I just thought, I've got two kidneys but I only need one."

The pair had surgery last September and Paul said it made a big difference to him being able to go through the transplant with his sister. He said: "I felt different because Leanne was in it with me."

The good news is that the transplant worked straight away. Afterwards, they both recuperated at home. Paul returned to school just before Christmas, but it took Leanne four months to recover from the operation.

The transplant came only three weeks before her 21st birthday. She was too poorly to enjoy the big celebrations she had hoped for. In the end she went to a James Blunt concert in Leeds.

Lynne says it was hard to watch her children go through the pain and stress of the operation. She said: "Leanne never faltered. She wanted to do it. But as her mum, I did wonder: 'Is this the right thing to do?'"

She added: "They are amazing. They've done it, but I have suffered emotionally; the trauma of watching them go through it, I just wish it could have been me who gave Paul the kidney."

Lynne and her family hope their story will encourage more people to register as organ donors and - equally importantly - tell their next of kin of their wishes.

She said: "People can be on the waiting list for a long time. Every day you wake up thinking: "will it be today?'."

How to be a donor...

IT took me only two minutes... not long to save seven lives and improve the outlook of countless others.

A mere 120 seconds was all the time it took to log on to UK Transplant's website and register my wish to be an organ donor.

Like the majority of the population, I support organ donation and should I die suddenly I would hope my body parts could be used to save others.

However, like most of us, I hadn't done anything about it - or told anyone of this fact.

Which is why UK Transplant, the organisation that manages the NHS Organ Donor Register, encourages people to sign up and tell their next of kin.

Dominic Moody, of UK Transplant, said: "A family is much more likely to refuse consent if they don't know their wishes. Four in ten families refuse consent and the main reason is they didn't know what their wishes were because they never talked about it."

The national register is the modern day equivalent of carrying a Donor Card, but is better because it is a central database which hospitals can access round the clock.

It's easy to sign up - you can telephone, visit the website, or pick up a leaflet from your GP.

It already holds some 13 million members - quite impressive, but that only accounts for one in five of the population.

Dominic said the country desperately needed more donors - some 400 people die each year while waiting for transplants.

He said: "There are more than 8,000 people in need of a transplant but the shortage of donations sees fewer than 3,000 are carried out each year."

In the York area, there are 56 people waiting for transplants. Between 2004/05, 36 York patients received an organ transplant. At present there are 130,923 from our area on the national organ donor register.

Dominic said if more people registered there would be less need for people such as Leanne Bradley to undergo surgery to save a loved one.

He added that organ donors often saved several lives, and improved the health of many others. "You could donate seven organs, so save seven lives. You can also donate tissue, or corneas, which can give people back their sight."

For more details, or to register, telephone 0845 60 60 400 or log on to www.uktransplant.org.uk or pick up a leaflet from your GP's surgery.

Updated: 10:29 Tuesday, April 04, 2006