FOR more than two years a packed bag gathered dust at the bottom of Stephen Hancock's wardrobe. It contained a change of clothes, toiletries and towels.

This bag was only ever going to be used for one very important occasion.

And on one weekend in November that moment finally came.

"Every time I saw that bag I would always think would it ever get used?" says the 55-year-old freelance consultant from Bootle.

"When I got the phone call I didn't jump for joy.

"I thought crikey Stephen, you better not mess this up.

"It meant someone had died. I felt a massive responsibility - a family at their worst possible time has been asked 'do you mind if we take their spare parts?'"

The phone call Stephen received was to tell him that after almost three years on the organ donation waiting list a kidney had finally been found.

A family had consented to their loved ones' organs being used to save the lives of others, and Stephen was one of them.

Life-changing call

"It was entirely out of the blue to hear this voice saying 'it's the transplant co-ordinator from the Freeman's, we have got a match,'" he says

"My head promptly just exploded."


Stephen Hancock. Stephen had prepared his hospital bag so he could grab it at a second's notice, put it in the boot of his car and drive to the North East for the transplant. And that's exactly what he did.

His wife Alison had gone out walking on the day of the call and Stephen had no phone signal so only had time to leave a note on the kitchen table.

It said: "Dogs have been fed, off to Newcastle for a transplant".

Within 30 minutes of the emotional telephone conversation, Stephen was at the wheel, driving to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, the specialist site where the life-changing transplant would be carried out the next day.

The trip was an emotional one.

He says: "I was beginning to panic. It all got too much.

"I just started crying."

After getting lost in the city, Stephen flagged down a taxi driver for directions who shouted over in a strong Geordie accent: "Why are you in such a rush?". Stephen replied: "I'm having a transplant, just get me to the hospital."

The shocked driver gladly obliged, with Stephen following behind in his car. That act of kindness is a memory that sticks with him.

Life on dialysis

Stephen's journey to this point started three years ago when he began to feel unwell and tired on a daily basis, something he initially put down to his "advancing years".

Many blood tests later and doctors came back with some devastating news - he had kidney failure and they only had 12 per cent function left. The diagnosis was crushing.

Almost immediately, Stephen had to start dialysis. He would go on to spend up to 10 hours a day hooked up to a machine at home, something that would drain him physically and emotionally.

It affected every aspect of his life, including his diet as he couldn't eat things like chocolate and fruit, and his lifestyle as he missed out on social occasions and day trips as a result.

Stephen's operation was the morning after the phone call, a remarkably quick yet standard turnaround.

Describing the first moments after the procedure, he says: "The first bit I can remember is being wheeled out and coming back down to the main transplant ward and the nurses coming up to me and saying I looked well."

Medical experts

There is, however, never such a thing as a routine transplant.

Complications can happen and in Stephen's case they did. It's something he has no memory of although he was told he collapsed.

"Four days after the transplant I had a massive cardiac arrest - I was down for 40 minutes, and then in a coma for a few days," he recalls.

"The people at the Freeman did a truly amazing job to not only keep me alive, they managed to save my new kidney as well, which took a massive hit because of the heart problem.

"It will always be somebody else's kidney and my body does not want it around.

"It's not a cure."

The transplant means Stephen now has three kidneys in his body: the donated one, and his two own almost dormant ones.

He has his heart hooked up to a defibrillator so if it was to ever stop pumping blood then an electric shock would be discharged automatically to revive it.

He also has to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life.

Register campaign

Stephen is doing everything he can to get more people to sign up to the organ donation register so people don't have to wait the same length of time he did. He knows people who were less fortunate than him, people who have had to plan their own funerals after losing their chance for a transplant as their illnesses got worse before their organ match came.

The Bootle resident wants families to have conversations about organ donation and for people to make clear what their wishes are by signing up to the register.

"It's important they tell their families because in the UK if somebody dies it's the family that ultimately make the decision and in the UK 40 per cent say no yet if you asked people something like nine out of 10 people say yes."

If Stephen was to ever meet the family of the deceased person whose kidney he now has in his body, he doesn't know what he would say. He instead thinks a hug would tell a thousand words.

Stephen knows only two things about his donor: their gender and age. Other than that it's a complete mystery.

"I strongly believe families take some comfort from the loss of their loved ones not being in vain," says Stephen.

"My life has totally changed in so many ways.

"I ate my first orange after the transplant. It was amazing. The feeling of having a citrus fruit was like having a crafty cigarette behind the back of the bike sheds."

'Just magical'

Stephen knows how lucky he is.

"It's just magical," he says.

"Having gone through this process I'm somebody who has a far greater understanding of the fragility and value of being alive and healthy.

"I'm not as fit and healthy and pain free as I thought I would be but my outlook is very different.

"Now I'm looking at a situation where my situation will improve."

Stephen's life is now very much like that hospital bag - it's being put to better use and is in its proper place.

*Click here to join the organ donation register or call 0300 123 23 23.

*Read more about Stephen's Hancock's fundraising last year during a cycle ride here .

Facts about organ donation


- Around 7,000 patients are on the UK's transplant waiting list.

- Nearly a third of patients have been waiting for more than two years.

- Almost 5,000 people are waiting for a kidney in the UK. This is more than the total number of people waiting for any other organ combined.

- More than 900 children in the UK have endured the wait for a kidney transplant in the last 10 years and 16 patients aged under 18 have died before receiving the transplant they desperately needed.

- In 2015/16, 1,364 people became organ donors when they died and their donations resulted in 3,519 transplants taking place.

- In 2015, 466 patients died in need of an organ and a further 881 were removed from the transplant waiting list as many of them would have died shortly afterwards.