'It was a race against time' - Telford mother saved by liver operation
A Telford mother of two has good reason to encourage more people to sign up to the NHS organ donor register.
Monira Khanom, 36, had her life saved when her liver began to fail in a very short space of time, going from the first symptoms of nausea to intensive care in just three months.
The cause of her liver failure is still unknown. It started in January 2015 and was first thought to be a virus but by March she had “turned yellow”, she said, and was too weak to look after her children.
She was referred to specialist liver unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
“I can't describe how I felt in the taxi on the way there. I was going 45 miles away from home and through that journey I kept looking at the surroundings around me in Shropshire and wondering if I would ever return. I couldn't even say goodbye to my children that day,” she said.
Once there she was moved to intensive care.
“That’s when they put me on the super urgent list, which usually means you don’t have too long left, maybe a couple of days.
“Even waiting two days was difficult as my liver could have given up at any time.
“It was a race against time, I just didn’t know it I was going to make it,” she said.
She said the hardest part was telling her children. She said son Ifam Ali, now 4, was too young to know what was happening but daughter Aleena Ali, now 9, needs special support and found it hard to cope with the changes in family life, and she worried what would happen to her without her mum.
Luckily she had her transplant on May bank holiday 2015. But it was five weeks before she started trying to walk again, and about a year to feel physically stronger again, as she weighed just six stone after her ordeal, she said.
She said she still had to live on medication which had its own side effects, damaging her kidneys, but at least she was still here to be with her children.
“You just have to live with it,” she said.
She said many people have to stay on transplant waiting lists for years, so it was important to get the message out to more people that they could help by agreeing to donate.
She even agreed to act as an advisor for the Phil Mitchell story line in TV soap East Enders.
“NHS organ donation put me through to them, they wanted to speak to people who had gone through a liver transplant to make sure they got it right and didn’t upset anyone who had been through it,” she said.
She said that sadly, due to the shortage of donors, some people have no choice but to live with liver failure and some die before they get the transplant they need.
“I don’t know who the donor was but I'll never be able to thank my donor and their family enough in words,” she said.
“I didn’t know anything about organ donation and transplantation before this. Now I try to promote it whenever I can.
“I started a blog where I talk about life after transplant and try to motivate people to join the NHS Organ Donor Register,” she added.
Monira’s blog can be found at transplantmum.blogspot.co.uk.
