On 1 May, Facebook announced that they are working with the NHS Organ Donation Register to increase the number of people on the donor register. You can now click on a tab on their Facebook page and fill in your details to joing the register.

Sixty five per cent of people would join the register but only 33 per cent of the public are on there. Not only that, 96 per cent of people say they would take an organ if they needed one.. This baffles me. So they would take an organ but they wouldn’t donate one, even after death, when it’s just going to go to waste? Many people say that 32 per cent of people, that would donate an organ but are not on the register, is made up of people who haven’t got round to signing up.

I am doing a multimedia story telling project on the importance of organ donation and wrote this piece about my Nan who died waiting for a liver. I thought I would post it on here for those who wold never see it. It might change someone’s opinion. It might not. But even if it encourages one person to think about joining the register, that’s potentially 9 lives that could be saved.

“Ever since I was little I remember having two mums. I had a dad – I lived in a conventional mum, dad and two children family – but my grandmother was always a big part of my life. It was like having two mums.

She never touched a drop of alcohol in her life but the sad and ironic thing is she died from liver cirrhosis. She died waiting for a liver. We watched her die waiting.

To everyone else she was another name waiting on a list. To us she was everything. She was a mother. She was a grandmother. Without her, I wouldn’t be here. My mother wouldn’t be here. She brought my mum up but she also helped to bring us up. She was so much more than just a grandmother. She was my confidant. She was my friend. She would convince my mum to let us stay up late watching scary movies and stuffing ourselves with sweets and she would be right there with us.

She was born on 10 October 1945, in Pakistan, just 2 years before the Pakistan-India partition. On her 21^st birthday she gave birth to my mum, who then four days after her 21^st birthday gave birth to me and my nan became a grandma aged just 42.

From the day I was born she was a big part of my life. She moved in with my mum temporarily when I was born and was never far away. We moved in with her when I was aged just 3. We moved out when I was older but she was never far away.

She was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2001, when I was just 14. The doctors told us that she most likely caught it whilst undergoing an operation in Pakistan when she was younger, from a dirty needle or non-sterilised apparatus or a blood transfusion. It could have been anything.

They didn’t know how she got it, considering she had been in and out of hospital for various operations from the age of 18, from a caesarean section to have firstborn son, to removal of her pancreas, her hip replacement and various blood transfusions and injections in between.

Most likely they said it was when she had a c-section to have her firstborn son in 1963 and although the risk of a mother passing on Hepatitis C to her baby is only around 5%, it meant we all had to get tested. As if it wasn’t difficult enough to learn that your grandmother had an incurable disease and you had to be very careful around her in case she had a cut or whatever and it could get passed on, then to learn any one in your family could also have it. Your mum could have it. Your sister could have it. They could both have it. You could have it.

First my mum got tested, because if she didn’t have it that means we didn’t. She didn’t. Luckily, none of us have it. We still get tested every six months, just to be on the safe side. Apparently Hepatitis C takes years to show any sort of symptoms hence nobody had picked it up sooner.

The problem was she had three slipped discs in her spine. She had spent most of her life getting epidurals and took a lot of medication. She was always in a lot of pain because the vertebrae were rubbing against each other. The older I got, the less she could walk. By the time I was 14, she could barely walk more than a few steps. Then she was diagnosed with Spinal Stenosis, which meant a nerve in her spine became trapped.

Then in 2004 things got worse and she was in excruciating pain constantly. Her GP found a dark shadow in her lower spine on the X-ray. They sent her to a specialist hospital in London. They found TB in her spine. I never thought you could get TB on your spine. The problem was, the more drugs they gave her the worse her liver got. But they didn’t have a choice. We didn’t have a choice. Her spine got better slowly but her liver got worse. They gave her Fentanyl and a lot of morphine. She spent the last five years of her life in and out of hospital. Mostly in.

In 2006, when she got sent back to a hospital near us, they told us her liver was getting worse. But a year later we finally got some good news. The TB was finally all gone so they could stop reducing her medication. She started recovering. Her liver started recovering. However, another year later she had a nasty fall and broke her arm and hip. She had to have a hip replacement, which meant going back on strong medication. Her liver started to deteriorate again.

This time they told us she would need a transplant. She went on the waiting list. Her health deteriorated again as her liver slowly started to give up. We kept praying and hoping that we would get that call. But two years passed and it didn’t happen. Then it was too late, she was too sick. They said her body wouldn’t be able to cope with such a massive operation.

My Nan died aged 63. It was the worst day of my life. Ten times worse than the day my dad left. A hundred times worse because my dad left out of choice.

I remember the day she died like it was yesterday. It was the hardest, longest and saddest day of my life. She was finally going to be coming home from the hospital that Friday. They were finally gonna let her come home. No more visiting hours. No more hospital food. No more being surrounded by sick old people and alcoholics.

Preparations had been in full swing. A special hospital bed had been delivered to our house. A schedule had been set up with a nurse who would visit every day. The bathroom had been altered to suit her needs so that she could get out of the bath a lot easier. I remember talking to my housemate about how excited I was about going at the weekend to see her at home and how she would finally get to be at home, out of horrid hospitals.

I was at University revising because my final exams started in just two weeks. I went to open the door and my mum was standing there with my aunt and cousin in the car. She had turned up at my door at uni, without warning. She never did that. She would have called first. So I immediately knew something was wrong.

I asked her what was going on. She said there was something she had to tell me about Nan. I thought to myself something has happened. She has probably got worse. Maybe she had caught an infection. I never in a million years thought she had passed away. She told me my Nan was no longer with us. I fell to my knees as soon as I heard those words. It was like someone had punched me in the chest.

The next week just sort of passed. Then I had to go back to do revision because my exams were in less than a week. I finished my exams. Then a month passed. Then a year. Now it’s been over three years but it feels like it happened yesterday. I still can’t believe she’s gone. We still have her clothes. Some of them still carry her scent. Some days I wake up and for a moment I forget I won’t see her again. I won’t hear her voice. I won’t get to touch her skin. I won’t get to hear her laugh or just give her a cuddle.

They say time heals and that it gets easier. It doesn’t. It doesn’t get better and it doesn’t get easier. You just learn to live with it because you have to. That doesn’t mean you miss them any less.

If someone offered me £10 million pounds or 10 minutes with my nan, I would choose 10 minutes with my nan time and time again, because as cheesy and cliché as it sounds, money means nothing against love or life. You can’t buy a Granmother’s love. Or anything romote close to it.”