22nd May – Barney’s ‘sharing’

The process of organ donation was both quicker and slower than we imagined.
Once we had informed the team of our decision the specialist team were called in.  We met a wonderful SNOD (specialist nurse for organ donation) called Mike, who went through all the initial paperwork with us.
We had talked long and hard,  about what we wanted: we wanted to donate as much as we possibly could- except for Barney’s eyes- we didn’t want to keep him on machines indefinitely for the search however, both for our own well being and his, so did set a deadline; lastly, we wanted to go into theatre with him where his ventilation would be stopped, so that his heart would stop, cuddled in our arms.
All of this was instantly accepted and the process began.
Barney’s history had to be throughly checked, he had to receive some special medicine and his blood group checked.
His blood group was AB+ , which is a universal receiver of blood/tissue but made the donor process a more specific match.
Barney went ‘live’ into the system at 11pm that evening.
We spent the day giving him cuddles, chatting to him and helping our wonderful day nurse, Emily, care for him. We shared our happy memories with her and talked non-stop about our wonderful boy.
Grandparents had been called in the evening before and other family had dialed in for the last rights to be performed by the priest, as per our request.

Once B was ‘live’ in the system, we just waited.  His liver matched super quickly and we were informed over night of all other progress.
His kidneys were then a match and the checks for certain antibodies etc needed to be done.
Barney’s heart and lungs were just too diddy and the match too specific for any match to be found. His liver could be ‘fitted’ and both his kidneys went into an adult, so size didn’t matter there.  However, heart and lung have to be a much closer match unfortunately, which is why the list is so long and the waiting process for those that need them so tense, and often sad.
Once the matches were complete, plans for surgery the next morning were made.
We spent an urestful night having final cuddles and sharing more memories