'Hero'donated the precious gift of life
| Published date | 19 October 2022 |
| Publication title | Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser |
Just as Isobel Walters saved Rascal when she suggested dropping by an SSPCA animal rehoming centre, just for a look, the doe-eye Spaniel-cross saved her, too.
Tommy says it was the 13-yearold dog's way of giving back.
It was an episode from which a long and dramatic journey would unfold for Isobel - one that would eventually lead her to receiving the liver of a person who had bequeathed their organs in the event of their death.
It was in 2000 when Isobel was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Due to the absence of characteristic symptoms, it's a condition medics suspect she may have harboured for a decade.
The diagnosis came out of the blue for busy working mum Isobel, who said: "You run about after the kids, but you are not really exercising. You are jumping in the car and running them here and there. My diet was absolute rubbish. I was two or three stones heavier than I am now."
Six years later, Isobel lost her mum, who'd suffered multiple organ failure. Although the cause of her death was inconclusive, she had, near the end, developed a yellow pallor. Although that coincided with Isobel's receipt of abnormal liver results, blood tests ruled out anything hereditary.
Isobel was to be diagnosed with non-alcohol fatty liver disease - a condition associated with her diabetes.
That progressed to the advanced form: nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which can lead to life-threatening cirrhosis - the scarring of the liver.
When, one morning, she was violently sick, bringing up black bile that resembled ground coffee, NHS 24 advised her to go straight to Hairmyres Hospital, at which a series of scopes ensued.
There, gastro enterologist Dr Helen Mackie referred her to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary - the only hospital in Scotland that performs liver transplants.
On her return to the capital the following year for a second appointment, doctors detected decompensated cirrhosis - an acute deterioration in liver function. She was twice admitted to hospital with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) - a reversible syndrome of impaired brain function, which can present like a stroke, and occurs in patients with advanced liver failure. With a malfunctioning liver, the toxins in her body were collecting in her brain.
"Tommy used to call Hairmyres my holiday home," said mumof-three, Isobel. "I was never out of the place."
Although...
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