TEN-YEAR-OLD Elodie Gray, from Kingswood, has again been playing her part in encouraging families to think about organ donation.
Elodie received a heart transplant before she was a year old and enjoys life with her family and friends in spite of facing many challenges.
She has competed several times in the Transplant Games and this year she spoke out in support of Organ Donation Week.
Interviewed by John Darvall on BBC Radio Bristol, she told how she enjoys going to school, singing, running around with her friends and playing football.
Her dad Colin spoke about how proud he and his wife Sarah and Elodie’s siblings Freya and Austin were.
Elodie was only a few months old when she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. Her parents were told Elodie would need to be put into an induced coma while they waited to see if medication would work. It quickly became clear that a heart transplant would be her only option.
Elodie was transferred to the Freeman Hospital – travelling to Newcastle by plane with her mum while Colin made the journey north by car.
He said: “We’d been told it was possible Elodie wouldn’t survive the flight, she was so small, they we worried she wouldn’t cope with the vibrations from the plane.”
Elodie’s journey to transplant was no less challenging, surgery to help her heart recover was unsuccessful and she was placed on a Berlin Heart (a machine which takes over the job of the heart and pumps blood around the body). There are risks associated and Elodie suffered a stroke and multiple cardiac arrests.
Colin said: “We were told by Elodie’s doctors that she would need to come off the Berlin Heart which meant we’d have to say goodbye to our little girl. Amazingly that night we received the call to say a heart had become available and we needed to get back to the hospital while they prepared Elodie for surgery.
“We are immensely proud of our miracle, Elodie has seen off many challenges, even before receiving her new heart. We could never have foreseen her reaching this milestone (the tenth anniversary of the transplant) as there were many critical times where we could see no future. But you always had to have hope. Elodie knows what has happened to her and how serious it was, and she just wants to help people.
“Without donors and families donating organs there would be far more heartache and more deaths. I wouldn’t have my daughter if it wasn’t for that family who made the brave decision to donate their child’s organs at the most devastating of times.
“People don’t always realise how important it is to confirm their decisions around organ donation – please join the register. Elodie is a living, breathing example of just how important organ donation is.”
Since the creation of the NHS Organ Donor Register in 1994, more than 100,000 people had their lives saved by a transplant.