A CO Donegal woman has become one of the few people in the world – to get a second liver transplant.
Anna Daly, a 48-year-old mother of one, received a new liver when she was living in Britain in 1990.
And more than 20 years later she has been given a second liver, this time at a Dublin hospital.
Her story has been released to help raise awareness by the Irish Kidney Association about transplants and donors.
Anna was just 16 she she was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a serious condition where the body’s immune system attacks the liver. Untreated autoimmune hepatitis can lead to scarring of the liver (cirrhosis) and eventually to liver failure.
She underwent her first liver transplant in King’s College Hospital in London at the age of 25. Some 22 years later she had her second transplant in St Vincent’s Hospital after the liver from her first transplant began to fail as illness returned.
Anna has paid enormous gratitude to her husband Brian, her daughter and all the staff associated with the liver transplant programme, as well has her own GP.
And she had special words for donors.
“It is incredibly generous of the family to be able to do this because it means so much. It had given me another life. I have had a lot from life and this is a huge generosity,” she said.
The Donegal mum wants people who want to be donors to tell relatives.
“The message for me is to get people to talk about this issue not at a time when somebody is seriously ill,” she said.
“Obviously that is going to be the time that it will be broached with them, but it would be really good if people…talked to their families about it. That way it doesn’t make it such a horrendous decision for the family to make at a time when they are losing somebody.”
For further information go to www.ika.ie
