Cork woman speaks about waking up from a coma to news she had emergency liver transplant

A MACROOM-BASED woman who awoke from a coma unaware she had undergone a liver transplant said she is sincerely grateful that her life was saved thanks to organ donation.

Noreen Murphy shared her story at the launch of Organ Donor Awareness Week 2024, organised by the Irish Kidney Association (IKA) in association with the HSE’s Organ Donation Transplant Ireland.

“Life pre-transplant was of near uniformly good health and no known diagnoses before waking from a coma to hear the words: ‘Welcome back Noreen. You are in the intensive care unit in St Vincent’s hospital, you’ve been in a coma and have had an emergency liver transplant and everything is going to be OK’,” Ms Murphy said. 

“When my family arrived at the hospital, grey with worry and exhaustion, they filled in the blanks for me.

“The medical team in Tallaght Hospital had identified that there was an issue with my liver and sent me after three nights to St Vincent’s Hospital and the doctors there set to work providing me with steroids to calm down my immune system, which had made the inconvenient decision to attack my liver.

“When this treatment didn’t work, I was placed in an induced coma and from here was placed on the super urgent transplant list as my time was running out.

“Thankfully, in the first week of March 2019, I was fortunate enough to receive an organ from the UK and I woke up a week or so later post-transplant to a new normal,” Ms Murphy said.

She said she is forever indebted to the person and family that donated.

“It is with sincere gratitude to organ donation and to a selfless family in the UK, who when faced with the ultimate tragedy, chose to save other families, whom they would never know, from experiencing that same heartbreak by choosing organ donation,” Ms Murphy said.

Individuals who wish to support organ donation by sharing their wishes with their loved ones are encouraged to keep the reminders of their decision available by carrying the organ donor card, permitting Code 115 to be included on their driver’s license, or having the ‘digital organ donor card’ app on their smartphone.