Heart-lung transplant mum’s friendship with the family of her teenage donor who died in a car crash
One young woman’s life cut tragically short, another given a second chance in a series of sliding door moments that makes this story of sorrow, generosity and courage one that could hopefully change society’s view on organ donation.
QLD News
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IT started with two elderly women neighbours chatting over a fence about life — the tragedies and also, the miracles.
One talked about a beautiful 18-year-old, a family friend, whose life support was switched off after a car crash, the teen’s parents agreeing to donate her organs despite their grief.
The other told of another young woman, a member of her extended family, who was in a Brisbane hospital after a life-transforming heart-lung transplant.
As they spoke, the women realised their stories were connected. The teenage car crash victim had saved the life of the 24-year-old heart-lung recipient.
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Seventeen years later, a treasured friendship has developed between transplant recipient Laurie McDonnell, who is married and has a three-and-a-half-year-old son, Sam, and the family of her teenage donor.
They attended Sam’s first birthday party, share Christmas messages, see each other when they can and every year, on the anniversary of Laurie’s transplant in early July, she sends them a text, or an email, attempting to say thank you for their precious gift.
“How do you say thank you for something like that? I don’t know,” she says, choking back the tears. “How do you say thank you for the fact that I’ve been able to do a Masters at university, get a job, get married, build a house and have a kid. That’s everything. I feel my words are never enough.”
To protect her donor’s parents, Laurie, 41, who lives on the Sunshine Coast, has chosen not to reveal their names, but she has their daughter’s initial tattooed inside a heart on her left rib cage. Her son’s middle name was also chosen in memory of her donor.
By law, health professionals involved in organ donation and transplantation must keep the identity of donors and recipients anonymous to protect both parties.
Laurie only learned of her donor’s identity through that friendship between two “little old ladies” who lived next door to one another. She agreed to meet her donor’s parents after being approached in the early years after her transplant and they have maintained contact.
“I am incredibly blessed that I’m one of the few transplant recipients who get to know about their donor,” she says. “I get to know what an amazing person she was through knowing her family.
“They’re beautiful people. We have a great relationship. But it’s hard. Their child didn’t get to have the experiences that I’ve had. But they’re only happy for me. They love that I’ve been able to have those opportunities. They love Sam.”
Laurie, who grew up on a farm at Bongeen, west of Toowoomba, needed a heart-lung transplant after being diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in her late teens.
She was born with a hole in her heart, which was surgically repaired when she was 18 months old.
In her second year of university, she realised something was wrong with her heart again during a party at her sister Carrie’s house as she and a friend were “mucking around” with her then brother-in-law’s stethoscope.
“I listened to my friend’s heartbeat and then listened to mine,” she recalls. “Mine didn’t sound like hers at all. I couldn’t hear a clear heartbeat so I grabbed my brother-in-law, who’s a nurse, and said: ‘Have a listen to this’.
“He said: ‘Oh Laurie, that’s doesn’t sound too good’.”
Her diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension — a type of high blood pressure affecting the vessels in her lungs, causing heart failure — changed her life.
Four years later in July, 2002, exactly a year after going on the transplant waiting list, she received her new heart and lungs at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane.
Then, in 2009, love struck when she reconnected with the man who would become her husband, Chris McDonnell, thanks to her mother Delia Kronk’s match making.
As a little girl, in the 1980s, Laurie Kronk would play with Chris when she visited her Nan in Toowoomba. Chris’s grandparents lived across the road.
When his grandfather died a decade ago, Laurie’s mother attended the funeral.
Talking to Chris after the service, Mrs Kronk asked: ‘Do you remember my daughter Laurie? Are you single? She’s still single. Here’s her email address’.”
He did not even have his own email address at the time. However, a fortnight later, he used a friend’s email to write to “the little blonde girl” he remembered from his childhood.
They wrote back and forth a few times, then started talking every night on the phone, got together a few weeks later and were married in January, 2010, about six months after meeting up again.
Thoughts inevitably turned to babies.
“As a woman, it’s something you feel that longing to do and it was for me,” says Laurie, who is one of nine children. “I just really, really needed and wanted to be a Mum.”
But doctors at the time advised against Laurie carrying a child herself and Chris wasn’t keen on her risking her health.
They turned their sights towards surrogacy instead.
A potential surrogate approached them when she learned of Laurie’s story on Facebook but after two years, the process left the McDonnells deep in debt and without a baby.
Laurie, who was only the third person in Queensland to have a heart-lung transplant, underwent two in vitro fertilisation cycles to collect eggs, but they didn’t “make it to embryos”.
They then tried a donor egg, fertilised with Chris’s sperm. Although the resulting embryo was implanted in their surrogate, she failed to fall pregnant.
“My husband and I were emotionally worn out at that stage,” she says. “We were in debt to my parents, we had no available cash left. You have to have lawyers. With the lawyers and all the IVF, it was over $40,000.”
Laurie ended up resigning from her job as an audiologist amid the stress.
“I had a breakdown at work one day in the lunchroom because I’d learned my IVF cycle had failed,” she says. “Surrogacy is so emotionally hard.”
After a six-month break, Laurie started thinking about trying to fall pregnant naturally. By then, two women who had received double-lung transplants had given birth in Brisbane with help from The Prince Charles Hospital transplant team and obstetric specialists at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
Kate Rootsey delivered her daughter, Molly, 11 weeks early, in February, 2013.
Four months later, Rebecca Green had a 2.3kg son, Ryker, 14 years after a double lung transplant. Both Molly and Ryker — and their Mums — are doing well.
Although Laurie had moved to Perth, she consulted Brisbane lung transplant specialist Associate Professor Peter Hopkins, who was supportive.
“I’ve been very fortunate with my transplant and had no major issues, no rejection, no major illnesses,” she says. “Peter said: ‘Look, if anyone is a good candidate for pregnancy, then you are’.”
Within three months of trying, she was pregnant. But it took a while for the news to sink in.
“I peed on a stick about five times just to make sure,” Laurie says. “I had all these sticks and they were all coming out positive.
“I didn’t tell Chris straight away because the next day was his birthday. I gave him all the sticks for his birthday present.”
In the leadup to her pregnancy, Laurie changed her immuno-suppressant drugs to medications considered safer for the baby.
Despite concerns for her health, she said she experienced no major complications.
“The pregnancy was great,” Laurie says. “I had no morning sickness, no migraines, no high blood pressure, nothing.”
Sam was born in Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital on December 15, 2015, via an elective caesarean at 35 weeks, four days’ gestation, weighing a healthy 3.02kg, despite being born more than four weeks early.
His Mum had become the first Queensland woman to give birth after a heart-lung transplant.
The McDonnells moved back to Queensland when he was five months old to be closer to family.
“He’s perfect,” Laurie says. “He’s super active. He definitely takes after the blokes in the family. They’re all into cars and so is Sam.
“My organ donor has not only saved a life, but she’s created life. Sam wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my donor; my parents wouldn’t have their 13th grandchild.”
Hopkins, the Queensland Lung Transplant Service director, says more than 500 people have received lung transplants in the state since the first one in September, 1996, including 24 heart-lung recipients.
He says most women are strongly advised against trying for a family after lung transplantation.
“Contraception is a really important part of their management and their overall health care because pregnancy could be harmful to mother and baby,” Hopkins says.
“When someone approaches me about pregnancy, I’m always a little bit defensive about it, thinking: ‘Is it in the right interests of the patient?’ We’re worried about their medical health and the commitment that’s required. Everything has to be in your favour to get a good outcome.
“You have to have good lung function, good heart function, healthy kidneys, excellent control of diabetes and normal blood pressure.
“Laurie has had very, very few complications in the last 17 years. She’s a really well patient.”
Only five women have successfully gone on to have a baby after receiving new lungs in Queensland.
“It’s far more common for lung transplant recipients to have a miscarriage than to have a live pregnancy,” Hopkins says. “In the five pregnancies we’ve had, there’s always been a struggle in the leadup to falling pregnant. It never happens quickly. They might have 10 or 12 attempts. It’s a real testament to their perseverance.”
He described Sam’s birth as “a bit of a miracle”.
“Laurie struggled for so long,” Hopkins says. “She was getting fairly despondent there for awhile. She’s incredibly lucky it worked out the way it did.”
Today marks the end of DonateLife week. Laurie hopes her story will encourage people to sign on to the organ donor register.
“If you’re no longer here, and you no longer need your organs, they could go on to create so much more and bring so much joy,” she says. “It could allow a teenager who is waiting for a heart, or waiting for lungs, to go and travel the world, or to study and get the career they always wanted, or to have a family like me. It’s such an amazing gift.”
• To join the organ donor register: donatelife.gov.au
•To donate to The Prince Charles Hospital Foundation: thecommongood.org.au
janelle.miles@news.com.au
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