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Waiting for a transplant Lives lost waiting Recipient of a transplant Giving the gift of life

An accident at work left Kevin Havard in need of a life-saving transplant. His daughter, Abi, tells his story.

On December 4th 1994, Kevin left his 5 children Matthew 11, Jenna 10 Natalie 8, Myself 5, Kaylie 4, and his wife Diane to go to work. Just minutes before finishing a night shift we received a phone call that changed the rest of our lives. We had been told that my dad Kevin Havard aged 33 had been involved in a serious accident in work where he was crushed by machinery.

He was rushed into hospital where he spent the next 5 hours in theatre. He had ruptured the main artery that fed his bowel and as a result lost 23 pints of blood. We where told it would take a miracle for him to survive this operation. That night we were very lucky as that miracle came to us. He pulled though the operation but was still critically ill. As a result of what happened he came out of theatre with twelve inches of bowel instead of the normal thirty seven feet.

Due to him having so little bowel he was unable to absorb any goodness from eating food as nothing stayed inside him long enough so he therefore had to be fed a liquid solution called TPN (Total Parental Nutrition) through a central line straight into his bloodstream. This was taken care of by the nutrition unit at Hope Hospital in Manchester where my dad was taught to link himself on and off his feeds. Without this feed my dad wouldn’t maintain any weight and would eventually die.

For 13 years this feed kept my dad alive but his quality of life slowly deteriorated as the fat in the feed affected his liver. As the years went by it became more and more necessary and urgent for my dad to have a liver transplant.

After extensive tests at Addensbrook Hospital in Cambridge in March 2006 specialists decided that a single transplant of a liver wouldn’t suit my dad as he didn’t have enough bowel to absorb the anti-rejection drugs and therefore he needed a double transplant of a liver and bowel.

His name was added to the transplant list and he was given 18 months to live without these vital organs being replaced. Over the next few months we watched my Dad have many turns where the toxins in his liver would get so high and poison his system. These resulted in him having to be heavily sedated on four separate occasions. There were times when the toxins where so high they would affect his brain resulting in him not knowing who his children where. We all stood by with the hope that he would receive a call telling us he could have his transplant. Even though every time he was in this position where he was critically ill for up to a week each time we still had faith that he would make a full recovery as he was such a fighter. He was hospitalised from March 2007 for 9 months in total only being able to return home for a few hours every week if he was feeling strong enough.

Despite being told he only had a short amount of time to live he always kept a positive attitude towards everything. He would always say "when I have my transplant" and never said "if". He had made plans to go on a cruise after he had made a full recovery and had a list of things he wanted to do. Even though we all knew that getting the transplant wasn’t a definite thing, because he always had this positive attitude we always assumed he would have it and him not being able to receive it didn’t really cross our minds.

We lived everyday in hope for that phone call but unfortunately it didn’t come and my dad lost his life on the 28th November 2007. Watching someone close to you wait in hope day after day and then have those hopes slip away from them is really hard for everyone in a situation like this.

Being part of the organ donation register can help reduce the amount of people that have to go through what my family and I have experienced and make those wishes of people who are waiting for a transplant come true. You can never truly understand the importance of signing up to this until you are in the situation yourself, where a loved one loses their life because people are unaware of how many people are affected by waiting for a transplant.