Since Glenridding woman Jayne Hutchinson received a kidney transplant nearly five years ago not a day has gone by when she has not thought about the donor and his family.
So when she got to meet Kari Robert, mother of 31-year-old Ben Dodson whose kidney she was given after he died in a motorbike accident in Edinburgh, it was a dream come true.
“It was a very emotional day,” said Jayne, who wanted to meet the family of her donor in order to thank them for what they had given her.
Earlier this year, 63-year-old Jayne, who runs her own cleaning and ironing business, visited the Caribbean and Egypt.
“It has given me a normal life, instead of being hooked up to a dialysis machine every night,” she said.
Both she and her late twin sister, Anne Gibson, inherited a genetic condition from their mother, and both had kidney transplants in the same year, but Anne died from an unrelated condition just a few months after undergoing her transplant.
At the meeting in Harrogate, which took place at the end of last month, Kari presented Jayne with a book of photographs of her son.
Before the meeting was arranged, Kari had written a letter to Jayne, in which she said her son was a “truly exceptional young man – hard-working, loyal, resilient, cheeky, intrepid, spontaneous and huge fun to be around”.
“He really lit up the room and wherever he was, that’s where everyone wanted to be as they knew they would be in for a great time and a lot of laughs,” she said.
Ben, who was an accomplished rower and rowing coach, had carried a donor card since the age of seven – such was his desire to help others in the event of his death.
“On the night that Ben died, as we all walked through the deserted hospital, I turned to my sister and said: ‘We’ve just experienced the very worst tragedy of our lives, but someone, somewhere, is right now picking up the telephone and hearing the very best news of their life.’ I’m glad one of those people was you Jayne,” she wrote.
Kari said she would be absolutely delighted to meet Jayne as, “after all, we share something very special and unique”.
Jayne, who had her transplant operation on May 19 2017, started the process of getting in touch with the donor family in June, 2019, and, had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic, a meeting would have happened sooner.
“She was so delighted that I got in touch,” said Jayne.
It was the first time that one of the transplant co-ordinators, who had been in the role for 14 years, had managed to arrange for a meeting between a recipient and a donor family to take place.
“It is rare, but I had no idea it was as rare as that,” added Jayne.
