Celebrating families who give the ultimate gift

Amy Ng-Thomson’s first time walking up One Tree Hill/Maungakiekie was six months after a lung transplant.
“It was a beautiful March day, and I always do it in March now… seeing the blue skies, the views, feeling the breeze, I get the sense that she’s with me every time I go up there,” she says.
That ‘she’ Amy is referring to is the woman who donated her lung. While she will never know who she is, (part of the organ donation process is that donors and recipients are kept mostly anonymous), she still thinks about her often.
“My first anniversary [of the transplant] we went to Port Douglas and on the way to the airport I was in the back seat by myself, looking at the passport, looking at the air tickets going, ‘this wouldn’t have been possible without you’,” she says.
Next Saturday is Thank You Day, a chance to express gratitude to everyone involved in organ donation, and raise awareness about the issue.
Today The Detail hears from transplant recipients, donor families, and medical staff about how the process works and the impact that it has.
While there are no age or medical background restrictions to becoming an organ donor, less than two percent of people meet the very specific criteria of dying in an ICU environment with a ventilator breathing for them.
Sue Garland is the team lead at Organ Donation New Zealand, and is also one of the coordinators, working with ICU staff to help families of organ donors through the difficult process.
Garland says there are very few medical conditions that prevent someone from being a donor. For example, a person who died from lung cancer may not be able to donate their lungs, but they could still donate their heart, liver, or kidneys.
“If the doctors and nurses have identified that that person could be a potential donor they will engage with the family and start that conversation about, one; that they’re not going to survive and two; the potential that they could be an organ donor,” she explains.
When Wikitoria Smith was approached to have that conversation about her son Clifford, who was in the ICU after a bicycle accident, she broke down.
“Because it was hard, that’s your flesh and something that grew in your puku (belly) and as a mother that was the feeling that came to me at the time, I didn’t want him to leave,” she says.
But ultimately Smith decided to say yes. It wasn’t an easy decision, but she says what helped her was knowing that Clifford would have wanted it.
“And understanding that if those organs weren’t being donated, they would be buried and they would rot and they’d be no use to anybody,” she says.
Smith now shares her story to help raise awareness about organ donation, particularly among Māori.
Amy Ng-Thomson writes a letter to the family of her donor every year to express how grateful she is for their generous decision.
She says they’ve given her the most precious gift of all, time.
“Even if it’s a year longer, three years longer, six months longer, it’s just that extra time. And time, I don’t think a lot of people realise, is one of the most valuable things that we could ever have in this world, more than money.”
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