IT’S one of those calls every parent dreads while their child is away on their first international trip.
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The one in which they find out their child is unwell.
Flora Hill mother Sharon Summers boarded a plane to Paris less than 12 hours after she was notified her daughter Hayley had been admitted to hospital.
Doctors initially believed the then-21-year-old had pneumonia.
But tests would reveal Hayley had a “one-in-a-million” autoimmune disease, Goodpasture Syndrome, which attacks collagen in the kidneys and lungs.
“It was devastating,” Sharon said.
“When I got there she had been put into an induced coma.”
Hayley thought she was going to be under for a couple of days.
“I woke up about a week-and-a-half later,” she said.
She had been unwell with the flu before she embarked on her European adventure.
“Roughly three weeks in, I started to get sick again,” Hayley said.
She had been travelling in Ireland and Italy before she became critically ill.
The trip came about the time of her 21st birthday.
Hayley saw a doctor about three days before she went to hospital in Paris, and was told she might have something like bronchitis.
“I woke up one morning and I was really short of breath,” she said.
That’s when doctors began to suspect pneumonia, and she was admitted to hospital.
It’s been almost three years since Hayley was diagnosed with Goodpasture Syndrome.
“Basically it attacks the filtering units in your lungs and kidneys,” she said.
“Your lungs can heal themselves, but your kidneys can’t so the kidneys were left quite scarred.”
As Hayley’s kidney function deteriorated, the process of sourcing a kidney donor began.
“It was always going to be Mum,” Hayley said.
“From the second she knew it was an option, she was doing it.”
Sharon said the decision to donate a kidney to her daughter was a “no-brainer.”
“That’s what was going to happen,” the 53-year-old said.
Fortunately, she was found to be a compatible donor.
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The transplant took place on June 8 at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne.
“I’m feeling fine,” Sharon told the Bendigo Advertiser earlier this week.
“Maybe a little sore, but I’d do it again tomorrow if I was able to.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
Hayley was also recovering well.
“She’s gone from sleeping all day to being up probably the majority of the day now,” her mother said.
Most importantly, Hayley’s kidney function had improved.
“I’m very grateful,” the 24-year-old said.
“It’s a pretty huge thing for someone to do for you.
“It does show you when stuff like this happens how many people actually do care about you.”
She and her mother were still in Melbourne, as Hayley had daily appointments at the hospital.
But they expected the appointments would gradually become less frequent.
”We’ll get through it. We always do, whatever happens,” Hayley said.
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Kidney donors accounted for all but two of the 267 living donors in Australia last year.
Two were liver donors.
Living donations increased by 9 per cent in 2016, compared with 2015.
Forty-four of the 265 living kidney donors were paired with a recipient after finding out their blood or tissue types were incompatible with a loved one in need of a transplant.
The initiative, called the Australian Paired Kidney Exchange Program, has facilitated almost 200 successful live kidney transplants since it started in 2010.
Though living donations are on the rise, the majority of organ transplants in Australia are made possible by deceased donors.
There were 1447 organ transplants in 2016, made possible by 503 deceased organ donors.
The figures represent a 16 per cent increase in deceased donors since 2015, and a record number of lives saved as a result of organ transplants.
Live transplants are not performed in Bendigo, though surgeons travel from Melbourne for organ retrieval from deceased patients.
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Bendigo Health nurse donation specialist Craig Sloan helps inform patients and their families about the possibility of becoming an organ donor, and provides support to the parties involved.
“The main thing is about knowing people's wishes,” Mr Sloan said.
“If people decide to become an organ donor they need to discuss that with their family.”
Without certainty about the patient’s wishes, he said the rare opportunity to help save lives could be lost.
About 1 per cent of people who die in Australian hospitals have the ability to become a solid organ donor, Mr Sloan said.
The criteria is less restrictive for corneal or tissue donors.
Approximately 1400 people are on the waiting list for an organ transplant in Australia at any given time.
“The number of organ donors is increasing, but there’s still that waiting list,” Mr Sloan said.
People can register as a donor on the DonateLife website: www.donatelife.gov.au
Mr Sloan encouraged people to discuss the possibility of becoming an organ donor with their families, and to visit the website for more information.