Kayleigh Taylor from Clare near Sudbury came to Tommy's rescue after he was diagnosed with neonatal hemochromatosis.
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00:00 I'm Lauren, this is Tommy. I'm Tommy's mum and this is Kayleigh, my best friend and also
00:07 Tommy's donor. They were able to confirm that Tommy did have neonatal haemochromatosis which
00:13 is extremely rare and it could go either one of two ways, that his liver would regenerate
00:20 and fix itself basically or that he would need a liver transplant. What's that then?
00:28 This is Elomari, clever boy. Fast forward a couple of weeks, he wasn't really getting
00:35 any better, he was extremely, extremely jaundiced at this point and myself and Tommy's dad Callum
00:42 sat down and said that he did need a liver transplant and obviously no parent wants to
00:49 hear that, especially at such a young age. But straight away me and Callum done a media
00:55 appeal and overnight here the liver coordinators had over 200 applicants for donors all across
01:02 the world. Kayleigh didn't initially put herself forward purely for the fact that she has Gilbert's
01:22 Syndrome, I hope you don't mind me saying that. She has Gilbert's so she didn't think
01:27 she was going to be a suitable match. But I remember ringing her one day when we got
01:33 told Tommy's chances of survival in absolute tears because I did think I was going to lose
01:40 him. That night, I don't even know, but that night she stayed up all night researching
01:50 to see if people with Gilbert's Syndrome could be a donor. It was worse for me to think that
01:55 I couldn't be a donor when I knew I had Gilbert's Syndrome to when I found out that actually
02:00 it was an option because I was never prepared to let anything happen to Tommy if I could
02:04 do anything about it. It was really hard because I couldn't tell Lauren and Callum at that
02:09 point obviously I wanted to give them some hope but didn't want to get their hopes up
02:13 too much. My transplant coordinator got a phone call to say that Tommy had declined
02:17 and it was then that all systems go. They were like, "We're just going to do everything
02:22 now." As soon as I put myself forward, I knew it would be me. I remember begging them as
02:29 I was being put under the anesthetic, "Just get Tommy through this."
02:41 It was in December. We got told on Thursday that we have got a donor. It was the night
02:48 before his operation. I was able to walk Kaylee down to surgery in the morning. It was the
02:57 first thing. I think it was probably about 8 o'clock in the morning. I was able to walk
03:03 her down. I think we held hands the whole way, didn't we? That was hard because it was
03:10 just, she's got two children. She's got a family. She was putting herself at risk really
03:17 to save my little boy.
03:24 Tommy was in theatre for about 8 hours. It was very, very, very tough to go at times.
03:29 His blood pressure was all over the place. He lost obviously loads of blood. They said
03:33 it was a perfect match. They prepared us that Tommy may have to come back open because he's
03:39 having an adult liver and he was 6 weeks old and he was a small baby anyway. He was closed
03:46 so he didn't have to have any mesh or anything. He was completely closed.
03:50 Now fast forward on, you're 10 months now and you're doing so well, aren't you? The
03:57 hospital seemed very happy with him now. Kaylee has her checks, don't you?
04:02 Yeah.
04:02 You want to check up?
04:03 Yeah, all doing fine. Absolutely fine.
04:05 I'm sure she won't mind me saying that when we both met each other we thought we didn't
04:12 like each other. Once we got put in the same team and started training together, we became
04:19 really, really good friends really quickly and it was so meant to be. She's always been
04:25 there for me. Hopefully I've always been there for her and now we've got a bond that most
04:30 people could never have really.
04:32 I'm sure she'll be happy to see you.
04:40 Good.
04:45 Good.
04:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]