I had my liver transplant back in 2016 due to alcohol abuse and Hepatocellular Carcinoma.
For a good 10-months post-transplant, I suffered terribly with survivors guilt and PTSD. I honestly felt that writing that letter to the donor family was an honest reflection of my gratitude. It helped me to deal with my guilt, and helped me come to terms with the emotional trauma at the time.
Sadly I never received a reply, and I put this down to possibly being too soon, as emotions and feelings over the loss of a loved one were possibly still very raw.
On the 1st of October this year, I celebrated my 5th Liverversary. I thought that maybe time had been a good healer, and so once again I wrote a two-page letter to the donor family.
Today I have just had a telephone call from one of the liver transplant coordinators at the QE. It would appear that this second letter had been returned by the UK Transplant Registry as being unsuitable. They felt that I had broken certain rules by including my name, address and phone number.
I was also told that there was no record of the original letter I wrote back in 2016 either by the QE or the UK Transplant Registry. The coordinator did go on to explain that their system of dealing with donor letters is now much improved and that the person who used to deal with this is no longer working there. The lady on the phone was very sincere and sympathetic.
So, for five years I’ve been thinking that the donor family didn’t want to have any correspondence with me, but now they must be thinking what an ungrateful person I am.
For those of you who may have written to a donor family and have not received a response, make sure you too haven’t had your letter rejected or it has been lost.
I’m not sure what I’m to do next, what would you do?
Richard