My wife’s death was heartbreaking – but it wasn’t the end

When my wife collapsed without warning and I started resuscitation, I already knew, as a very experienced pre-hospital emergency nurse, that the outlook for her recovery was virtually non-existent.

She survived only with continuous breathing support to reach the emergency department at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, where I informed the doctors that, should it come to it, my wife would be a candidate for organ donation.

Within the first hour I was informed the CT scanning had shown that she had had a massive brain bleed, and that there were no medical or surgical options available. Already anaesthetised and on a ventilator, she was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. The next morning, Christmas Eve 2022, she was formally declared brain dead. From that moment on, my focus, on her behalf, was to enable her organs to be donated for transplant.

Initial cross-matching tests filled much of that day, until, in the late afternoon, her organ details were made available on the national transplant database. Within a couple of hours, we were informed both her kidneys and liver had been accepted for transplant, with the surgical team preparing to travel from London to undertake the operation that evening or just into the early hours of Christmas Day.

Carol (66) had trained as a nurse and midwife. She was a loving mother, wife and doting grandmother. None of us had any inkling that morning that as we enjoyed a pre-Christmas walk along Lyme Regis seafront that we were within hours of her leaving us.

Neither of us, in nearly 40 years of extremely happy marriage, had ever envisaged this day; we’d expected to reach grand old age together, and to exit our mortal lives content and with time to say our farewells. I cannot remember when, but we each understood from conversations somewhere down the line that should the unthinkable happen, we wished to be organ donors.

We both carried cards, but at the end of the day that didn’t really matter. I was there for her, I was advocating for her, and I was able to represent her wishes.

The transplant coordination team were phenomenal. Perhaps as a family we were somewhat unusual in being so switched on as to what was possible, what needed to be done, and what this and that meant. The intensive care team were equally wonderful; in particular the anaesthetist who came to take Carol to have the donation surgery.

As a family we were together, supportive of each other and of Carol in our final hours with her. We have been marvellously supported through the materials and comforters provided by the Donor Family Network, which were on her through her final hours and now provide memory-box treasures for her four young grandchildren. They also provided a fleece blanket, in which Carol was cosseted in her final hours. It now sits folded on her favourite chair.

As I walked with Carol to the doors of the operating theatre I had no regrets. There was a real sense of peace – of mission accomplished – because as a pragmatist, I knew in my heart that Carol had died the previous day as I’d tried to save her life. It’s only since that the recriminations come, as grief bares your soul and distorts reality into “what if” and “suppose that I had…” In the three months since then, not a day goes by when I don’t cry.

A lady of similar age to Carol received one of her kidneys (unfortunately the other was not suitable for transplant) and a man in his mid-thirties received her liver. Also donated were her heart (for the valves) and her corneas for later transplantation.

Please have that conversation with those around you. Enjoy the day, months and hopefully many years ahead; but if calamity strikes, be sure to let the medical staff around you know of your loved one’s wishes.