"Immediately after my transplant, I was scared of everything. Since then I have won numerous medals at the British Transplant Games and the European Transplant and Dialysis Games"

For years, I believed I was simply working too hard. In reality, I was living with serious liver disease. I was 42 when I was admitted to hospital with peritonitis in 2013 and during investigations, doctors discovered that I had cirrhosis.

By then, however, the illness had already been affecting me and my family for five or six years. Hepatic encephalopathy altered my thinking and behaviour, convincing me that nothing was seriously wrong and that my exhaustion was simply the result of working too much.

Everyday life had become unbearable. I was constantly exhausted and living with endless itching, pain and other symptoms. The encephalopathy changed my personality too. It made me mean, which made an already difficult time even harder for my wife and our young children.

When I was finally diagnosed, my daughter was just ten years old and my son was eight. After spending several months in and out of hospital, I was urgently referred for a liver transplant and joined the waiting list in early May 2014. My condition had then deteriorated so badly that I was temporarily removed from the list because I was considered too unwell to survive the operation. Thanks to the extraordinary care of the team at St James’s Hospital, I was stabilised.

On 19 May 2014, I received his lifesaving liver transplant. Recovery brought a new set of challenges. Immediately after my transplant, I was scared of everything. I had been ill for so long that even simple things seemed daunting. The top of the stairs in my own house looked incredibly high and precarious. With time, I began to accept life again, but I was still extremely careful about where I went, who I mixed with and what I ate. My transplant dominated everything.

My donor is connected to me more intimately than even the people closest to me. She gave my children their dad back. She gave my wife and me the chance of a life together, instead of leaving them to remember me only as an angry, desperately ill shadow of the person I had once been.

While I was recovering in hospital, my brother travelled from Australia to visit me. Together, we would walk laps of the ward as I slowly rebuilt my strength. On one of those walks, we passed a framed display containing two medals from the British Transplant Games.

“You should get some of those for yourself,” my brother told me. Those words proved prophetic. A year after his transplant, I met the Leeds Transplant Adult Team and for the  first time, I found himself surrounded by people who understood what I had been through, and who were living full, active lives after transplantation.

The team gave me my life back when everything still felt strange and new. I was instantly made to feel welcome and supported. Until then, my transplant had dominated everything. That changed within moments of arriving at my first Transplant Games. Seeing hundreds of other recipients living normal lives, enjoying sport and doing all the things everyone else does made me completely re-evaluate my own approach.

I’m now a successful discus thrower and have won numerous medals at the British Transplant Games and the European Transplant and Dialysis Games. I am also a licensed throws coach, coach at my local athletics club and captain the Great Britain team for shot put, discus and javelin. Away from the athletics field, I have travelled the world with Team GB and even hiked up glaciers in Iceland.

The man who once found the stairs in his own home frightening now lives with a sense of possibility. But I never forget the person who made that life possible. My donor. I often think about someone I will never meet, but who is connected to me more intimately than even the people closest to me. She gave my children their dad back. She gave my wife and me the chance of a life together, instead of leaving them to remember me only as an angry, desperately ill shadow of the person I had once been.

One donor can transform not only a recipient’s life, but the lives of an entire family. Talk to the people closest to you about organ donation and make sure they know your decision. You can also learn more about liver disease, its symptoms and the support available, because recognising the signs sooner could help save a life.

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