Importance of Organ Donation hits home at Town
As Huddersfield Town gears up for its annual ‘Give and Let Live’ game at home to Blackpool on Friday night, the Club doesn’t have to look far to showcase the importance of Organ Donation.
David Horsfall – husband of Town’s Receptionist Hilary – was fit and healthy until he came down with a cough and cold in 2009.
“It all started a couple of weeks before Christmas 2009 when David had a cold and a cough, it was quite a bad one, and he never got over it,” Hilary told htafc.com.
Doctors prescribed antibiotics and the former joiner returned to work, but the cough persisted.
“He was sent for an X-ray but they didn’t seem too concerned with what it showed,” Hilary added. “By Christmas 2010 I noticed that he couldn’t speak a sentence without having to cough – I knew something wasn’t right so we went to the doctors and it all progressed from there.”
A CT scan showed fibres on his lungs so David needed a biopsy, which confirmed he had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease, leaving a transplant as his only option of regaining his health.
Dave’s story was highlighted when Town played Bolton Wanderers in the second ‘Give and Let Live’ game back in December 2012. At that time he was on the organ donor list for the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle alongside 80 other people and thankfully, in May 2013, a donor was found for the Meltham man.
He underwent a life-saving double lung transplant operation, which lasted seven hours, and is currently doing ‘really well’ according to his wife:
Hilary explained: “Dave is back out of hospital, although we’re due back on Wednesday as he has a little bit of water on his lungs. He’s tried a course of steroids and subsequently some antibiotics, but neither has worked and as a result he’s going to get his lungs syringed one at a time.
“We were joking the other day that the Blackpool game might come a bit too soon after his appointment, but he’ll do everything he can to be there!
“It’s an on-going recovery process for Dave, but he’s alive and well and that’s what matters. He was best man at his friend’s wedding on Friday and he got through his speech very well! That’s been made possible because someone signed on the dotted line on the organ donation register.”
“If you sign up that’s all you have to do while you’re living but it allows your organs to be used after death, which means someone else can live. Until you face it you don’t realise how important it is. He was fit and healthy and then this happens.”
To join call the NHS Donor Line on 0300 123 23 23 or visit www.organdonation.nhs.uk.
You can buy tickets for Town's 'Give and Let Live' game against Blackpool now - click HERE!
