It only takes one life-changing minute

Take just one minute out of your day and join DonateLife in the race towards registering 100,000 new organ and tissue donors.

Amanda Cullen remembers to the minute, when she received the phone call that changed her life.

“It was a quarter past two on a Sunday morning,” recalls Amanda of that June 2018 day... “And when you get a phone call, then you have to drop everything and go and I wasn't prepared… I didn't expect to get a phone call for probably three-and-a-half to five years.”

That call was to let Amanda know, that a suitable donor kidney had been found for her at Westmead Hospital.

What followed was a frantic dash to pack bags and head off to Sydney, but now four years on, Amanda remains healthy and free from the weekly dialysis machine appointments and stringent dietary restrictions she had endured previously.

“Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, hooked up to the dialysis machine for five hours to clean my blood,” Amanda said.

“And towards the end, before I got my transplant, I was getting very sick. My blood pressure was dropping, it affects your heart and you're on fluid restrictions as well when you are on dialysis. I could only have one litre of fluid a day, and that includes what's in your food.”

This was Amanda’s life for the two-and-a-half years she spent waiting for a compatible organ donor.

In 2011, Amanda had received a kidney donated by her mother Lorraine, but a bout of double pneumonia caused her to reject the organ.

“To get double pneumonia; it was just one of those things that happens,” Amanda said.

“I didn't want my Mum to go through such a really big operation, but Mum being Mum she said, ‘you're having it!’ She wanted to fix me and the operation went really well and she's still fine… to get double pneumonia was just one of those things, but I got five-and-a-half years.”

Amanda knows she is one of the lucky ones.

At any moment, there are about 1850 Australians on the transplant waiting list and another 13,000 people on dialysis.

“I've still got friends in the dialysis clinic here in Orange that are waiting for kidneys and, because of my operation at Westmead, I know others whose organs failed and they are back on dialysis; the statistics are always quite high,” Amanda said.

Statistics also show that, despite the majority of Australians supporting organ and tissue donation, only one in three is actually registered.

For many, it is simply that they are unaware of what they need to do to register. They may even think they are already a donor.

“A lot of people think that, ‘twenty, thirty years ago, I ticked it on my licence, so I'm an organ donor,’ but that's actually not the case,” Amanda said.

 “You have to go do it on the [DonateLife] website or do it through the Medicare app… it's as easy as one minute or three taps on the Medicare app.”

Once registered, also make sure you discuss it with your family as they will be the ones to make the final decision.

“A big thing is, you need to talk to your family and express your wishes because, in the end, they can overrule it,” Amanda said.

“Express to your family that you want to be an organ and tissue donor then, at the end they can say, ‘yes, they want to be a donor’.”

DonateLife Week, July 24–31, is the national awareness week to promote organ and tissue donation. Registering is easy — it only takes one minute at donatelife.gov.au or just three taps in your Medicare app.