Loughrea man a living testimony to organ donation

Date Published: 01-Oct-2009

“I wouldn’t be here talking to you now if somebody hadn’t donated their organs ten years ago,” says Declan O’Doherty, whose life was saved when he received a double lung transplant at the age of 25.

Offaly born Declan who now lives in Bullaun outside Loughrea was born with Cystic fibrosis, but managed to live a fairly normal life until he was 17 years old. Then his health started to decline dramatically. In the year before his transplant he was mostly confined to hospital, hooked up to a 24 hour oxygen supply, taking loads of tablets, regularly needing an intravenous antibiotic drips and forced to use nebulisers to help him to breathe.

“People who haven’t lived through organ failure don’t know what it’s like,” says Declan, who is currently helping the Irish Kidney
Association to promote the 11th European Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation. That takes place this Sunday.

“Getting up in the morning was a task before the transplant. I was totally tied down and even getting out of a car made me breathless. I was very small (seven stone) and mostly in hospital, needing eight litres of oxygen a day. On the rare occasions when I was at home, I had to have two oxygen machines, because those at home only held five litres each.”

Declan was born with CF, which meant that he always had respiratory problems, but these increased gradually and “without a transplant I’d have died”. Thanks to his donor, not only is he alive and well, but he has since taken part in two World Transplant games, in Japan and in France.

he was taken to Newcastle’s freeman hospital in England for rigorous tests when he was 24, with a view to putting him on a transplant list. These included blood tests and also involved being measured, because in the case of lungs, the size has to match.

When organs…