MK Today - Monday 10th April 2023.

Last Friday was the anniversary of my daughter’s kidney transplant. I was in California at the time. Los Angeles to be precise. Rebekah was too ill to travel and was on-call for a donor organ son it was her two brothers I had taken on holiday to the Golden State. After a long overnight flight I was met at Heathrow by a friend with the news that Rebekah had received a life-saving kidney transplant at London’s Guys Hospital.

I love our NHS. Beck was born with chronic renal failure which was diagnosed within Milton Keynes then infant hospital in the mid 1980’s. She spent her childhood in and out of Guys Hospital but it was Milton Keynes General Hospital that saved her life and began my love of our NHS.

When you next go into what is now University Hospital Milton Keynes, from the entrance look to your left and you will see a beautiful piece of art celebrating, and yes celebrating is the right work, our hospital does harvesting organs from patients who have passed away to transplant into patients like Beck and save their lives.

On Friday 21^st April I am meeting with the Organ Donation Team at our hospital and am looking to extend my love affair with our NHS.

Way back some thirty and more years I worked with Elizabeth Ward who founded then original kidney donor card. When her son Timothy, known as Timbo, died in Guys Hospital from Kidney failure she devoted her life to trying to save others in her son’s memory. My daughter was one such salvation. Mrs Ward predicted the day when organ donation would be natural, there would be no need for donation cards and the law would support such. That day has arrived.

Within the law it is now assumed that on death a person will donate their organs for transplantation unless they have said otherwise. That, however, is not the way it actually works and I am not sure it is right so to do. We need a far greater awareness of the need for organ donation and on the loss of a loved one the family needs to step forward rather than the medical profession approach the family. I am so eager to learn how this is now being done in our beautiful Milton Keynes Hospital.

Within the NHS we have Blood and Organ Donation, the two go together. You cannot give someone an organ transplant without a blood transfusion. I have tried to find out but without success so that is a question I will be asking at the meeting in two weeks time.

Rebekah passed away in May 2017. She was again under the care of our beautiful Milton Keynes Hospital.

Beck was always known as Little Miss Sunshine. I defy anyone anywhere to find a photograpah of her where sheb is not smiling. One of her biggest smiles I use within my book OUR REBEKAH A LOVE STORY FROM OUR NHS.

I have rewritten NHS from National Health Service to NATIONAL HAPPY SMILE.

If I live to be one hundred years of age, twenty-seven years come November, I can never hope to repay my family’s debt to our NHS. At the centre of that love is our city’s hospital. I do not yet known its organ donation statistics but I do know it uses six thousand pints of blood every year to care for its patients. The NHS does not treat patients, it cares for them and cares with love. It was Milton Keynes General Hospital that first wrapped that blanket of love around my daughter.

This edition of MK Today  is an introduction to Monday 24^th April’s feature. University Hospital Milton Keynes is not a transplant centre but it is a donation centre. Within my love for our NHS I want to help use my story to raise the profile of this special work.

Do visit our beautiful hospital and allow the artwork within its entrance to inspire your love of our NHS to a higher level.