The 31-year-old Birmingham woman, Sunaina Paul, has urged more and more people, especially from BAME, to be organ donors after she received a ‘second life’ with a liver transplant.
Paul had been on a priority list but lack of donor from the Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) meant that she had to wait for long and it was becoming difficult to find a match.
Paul was born with Biliary Atresia, a condition in which bile ducts in the liver are blocked, leading to a build up of bile, which causes damage to the liver, reports imbirmingham.co.uk. In this
condition, the digestion process gets affected leading to damage to the liver as bile ducts become blocked and cirrhosis sets in.
Recently, Paul had been advised to stay home after the outbreak of coronavirus. The search for a suitable liver had been a difficult one since donor had to be from BAME and Paul’s blood group is a rare Blood Tye B.
As she was slowly moving towards the inevitable death, she got a call from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham informing her about a likely liver for her. The successful transplant was completed immediately and right now Paul is recuperating well.
Her aunt Jaimini Lakhani was overjoyed. She said, “We were just all in absolute joy, tears, such a bag of emotions. We just feel really blessed, we are massively grateful.”
Lakahni said that the family was looking forward to bring her home and happy to realise that now she can live the life of a normal 30-year-old person.
Sunaina had to undergo an operation when she was just seven weeks old to allow bile to flow from the liver to the intestines and her family had been informed then she will need a liver transplant eventually.
In between, her condition kept getting worse with doctors administering her with oral antibiotics and intravenous antibiotics to control the infections. Her struggle ensured that she kept going in and out of hospital till the time she got a call from the hospital.
Braving tremendous pain she managed to keep a smile on her face. She said that even though she seemed okay from outside, she knew she was slowly dying. Her 31st birthday was spent inside
hospital taking heavy doses
of medication to reduce the intense pain she was going through.
The outbreak of coronavirus further spooked the family hopes as her family was advised to protect her fearing the infection could be fatal for her. Their agony ended on Monday after the call from hospital and the following day surgery was performed.
