Jessica Manning is grateful to be alive after a heart and liver transplant. Photo / Doug Sherring
Jessica Manning is grateful to be alive after a heart and liver transplant. Photo / Doug Sherring
Less than a month after South Auckland woman Jessica Manning petitioned the Government to make organ donation mandatory, her own life changed.
In early September 2018 at 6.30am the 25-year-old received a call telling her she had 1.5 hours to get to Auckland Hospital to have a double heart and liver transplant.
Doctors had previously given Manning two years to live unless she had a combined heart and liver transplant. She was born with six heart conditions and later developed severe liver disease.
Jessica Manning spent 53 days in Auckland Hospital's Intensive Care Unit recovering from a double heart and liver transplant. Photo / Supplied
She had already been waiting 17 months for the transplant when the call came.
Supported by her family, she waited at the hospital for the organs to arrive.By 10am she was in surgery and her family had another stressful wait while she was operated on for 20 hours.
It was the longest operation her surgeon had performed because Manning lost so much blood. She required 22 litres to be replaced during the surgery.
Manning then spent five days on life support, 53 days in Auckland City Hospital's ICU and another 10 days on a ward.
She was still recovering in ICU and had started taking her first steps about 28 days into her recovery when a complication saw her diaphragm tear causing fluid to move up around her heart.
During surgery to repair the hole fluid rushed up strangling her heart, causing a cardiac arrest.
That was the scariest time for her family. It took doctors 20 minutes to massage her heart back to life and tests were carried out to make sure she was not brain dead, she said.
The cardiac arrest also set back her recovery and she suffered muscle memory loss. She had to learn how to move her legs again, sit up and even move her neck. She was again put on life support for another two days.
Photo / Doug Sherring
But three months since surgery, she's walking, going to the gym four times a week, can do her own make up and walk up a flight of stairs all without getting out of breath.
Although her recovery was ongoing Manning was feeling positive about the future.
When she was free from regular hospital visits, she planned to travel and eventually hoped to study to fulfil her dream of being a teacher.
However, the fact her new organs arrived within a month of starting the petition calling for mandatory organ donation and speaking publicly about it was not lost on Manning.
She has wondered if the donor had always planned to donate or had only recently had the conversation after the petition's publicity.
"I think it was all the awareness out there and getting everyone to talk ... It was 50/50 - people were either negative about it or positive about it but it still got people to talk whether they were donors or not. I think that's why there are so many more donors this year because people had actually talked about it.
"I'm also very thankful to not only donors, but everybody who donates blood because if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have survived that transplant."
For her six-month milestone in March, Manning planned to walk up One Tree Hill with anyone who wanted to join her and release gold helium balloons as a way of thanking all donors. The money raised from selling balloons would be donated to Organ Donation NZ.
An Organ Donation NZ spokesperson said several transplant recipients had publicly shared their inspirational stories this year which all helped raise awareness about the benefits of organ transplants.
"ODNZ would like to encourage everyone to talk about organ donation and let your family (or those people closest to you) know what you would want to happen if you were in a situation where donation is possible."
