Melbourne woman Kristy was eating at Macca’s when she got a phone call that saved her life.
It was a call she’d been waiting to receive for years, but it was bittersweet.
Kristy, then 22, was getting a kidney transplant after being on dialysis and it meant another family, thousands of kilometres away, was grieving the loss of their son.
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If it wasn’t for his donation, though, Kristy would still be incredibly sick.
“One day, I got a call after work. I was at McDonald’s eating, eating my meal, getting ready for dialysis,” she said.
“The call was, we found your kidney, and everything just stopped for me at that moment.
“They told me the kidney is from a young man from Perth. I had a minute to decide if I want this or not.”
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Kristy recalled “crying on the tram” as she made her way to hospital.
She shared her story of life-saving organ donation after a sweeping change was made to how Australians can register themselves as donors.
Those registered as organ donors can now add a digital copy of the cad in their MyGov app to easily and quickly indicate their choice.
NDIS Minister Bill Shorten told media today the majority of Australians are happy to be organ donors – but there was a missing link.
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“Four in every five Aussies say that they are up for donating their organs, but only one in every three Australians is actually registered to do it,” he said.
It’s going to change lives, literally, the ability to save lives. It’s really super easy.
“What we want to do is encourage Australians, through the use of our myGov app, to be organ donors, just to close the deal between a good intent and a good act.”
Kristy’s kidney transplant came after tough periods where she almost died.
“I was in intensive care. My heart was failing. My lungs were failing,” she said of one visit in hospital.
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One person registering themselves as an organ donor turned it around, though.
She had a successful transplant and was able to live the life she’d dreamed out.
“Now I have two beautiful children. They’re 18 months and four years old,” she said.
“I think that’s the biggest gift from the donors – giving me my life back, giving me a career back and letting me have a family.”
Shorten said he expects numbers of organ donation to increase following the change to the MyGov app.
“Australians are a pretty generous bunch of people, but sometimes we have an idea, but we don’t get around to doing it,” he added.
“What we want to do is take the degree of difficulty out of the process of converting your general aspiration to be an organ donor into a reality.”
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