Dave Donkin - Recipient
Heart recipient
Most people can remember what they were doing on certain days when a tragic piece of news is broadcast or a famous person died.
I can recall when I heard of the first Transplant in 1967. I was 17, an apprentice plasterer on a building site working for the local council, and the guy I was working with said something on the lines of did you hear the news at the weekend, “They’ve given a man someone else’s heart – they shouldn’t be meddling with the body like that – whatever next!”
Well I can only say I am so glad they carried on meddling!!
My problems began 20 years ago in 1985. I was only 35 when I became too ill to carry on my job as a plasterer. I was taken into hospital and after tests they found my heart wasn’t functioning as normal as it should, not a heart attack as a lot of my friends seemed to think.
I had a condition called Cardiomyopathy; the muscles around my heart were diseased. After 5 years and all sorts of different medications my heart began to deteriorate rapidly and time began to run out! The medication was losing its effect.
Sadly, it’s a waiting game, left to the kindness and generosity of someone thinking of others and signing up for the donor register!!
It was in August 1990 when I was informed the only alternative, for any chance of survival, albeit short-lived, was a heart transplant, which I was told may give me 2 to 3 years’ better quality of life.
At that time, I was, if I may say, Mr Average: 40 with a wife and 2 children, and a mortgage and although I was finding life unbearable and simple things like making a cup of tea a monumental task it seemed BAD news! Not something you really what you want to hear!
That was in the August of 1990, I was told to go home and wait! They said try and enjoy Christmas because if I where still around the following Christmas I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. It’s not just a case of going along to a Heart Bank and picking you one out! Sadly, it’s a waiting game, left to the kindness and generosity of someone thinking of others and signing up for the donor register!!
I was asked “have you not had the operation yet, must be a long waiting list.” I couldn’t get them to understand it was a transplant I need and not a bypass as they seemed to think, I was waiting for someone to die that had been good enough to sign the card and just as importantly talked to their next of kin.
On 26th of April 1991 I got the call from Freeman Hospital, It was then I received my new heart. I was told it was in superb condition. Sadly all I know was it was a young chap about 21 years old, involved in a RTA.
I mentioned it seemed BAD news to hear “you need a transplant”! However I now feel in a way the news shouldn’t be taken so badly after all. The moment I came round from the operation I felt I could have run a mile. My breathing was back to normal, no gasping for air. My skin was pink again, better than the deathly grey it had been for so long.
God willing next month, I’ll have had 15 years of good quality life, in which time I have seen my children grow up, leave school, and leave home, and best of all been around to see a grandson.
I’m able to play badminton, I have taken part in the British and in the bi-annual European Heart Transplant games, and if I may blow my own trumpet won a few medals along the way!
It doesn’t just take a donor to make a difference to life, as a recipient I view the medical staff involved in transplantation the same as those who sign the card and I will be forever grateful that they too decided to help others to live a normal life. If it were not for them “meddling”, as it was put earlier, I most definitely would not be alive today.
It has often been said to me, how brave I must be to have undergone such an operation. If I may finish now by quoting and I believe I am quoting Dr Christian Barnard.
“For a dying person a transplant is not a difficult decision. If a lion is chasing you to a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the river convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would never accept such odds if there were no lion.”