Transplant couple make Valentine’s Day plea as they face wait for kidney

A couple from York who both received organ transplants and celebrated their 10-year wedding anniversary last month are urging people to sign the organ donor register this Valentine’s Day so others can live life and find love like they have.

Brought together by organ donation

Richard Caulkin, 44, and his wife Wendy Caulkin, 46, both received lifesaving organ transplants before they met at the British Transplant games in 2013. This Valentine’s Day marks 15 years since Wendy was assessed and added to the urgent heart transplant list in 2011.  

The pair became a couple in early 2015 after a charity bike ride and Richard proposed on Wendy’s birthday in June that year, at Tynemouth Beach. Two weeks on from their 10th wedding anniversary, they have returned to visit Tynemouth beach following Wendy’s kidney transplant assessment at the Freeman Hospital.  

Richard said: “This place holds special memories for both of us; this is the first place we both went when we left hospital for the first time following our respective transplants and where I proposed to Wendy.”  

Wendy and Richard got married in 2016, and their wedding honoured their organ donors with speeches and donor cards tucked into the favours.   

They decided to make up for lost time after losing many years to illness and waiting in their 20s. After her transplant, Wendy trained as a cardiac nurse, helping heart patients like herself, while Richard became a research scientist. They continued competing in sport at the Transplant Games and travelled to Barcelona on their 8th wedding anniversary and visited Poland and the Czech Republic for their 9th.

Wendy said: “We felt quite blessed, to be honest, to be alive and to be able to get married. And it was organ donation that brought us together in the first place.   

“We owe it all to our donors and their families that we're alive, that we're living life, and that we found each other in the strangest of circumstances.”  

Wendy's story

However, this year they had to spend their anniversary at home. Wendy’s kidneys have now failed - a side effect of the immunosuppressant medication used to protect her heart. She is about to begin dialysis and needs a kidney transplant. Wendy said: “I don’t have a living kidney donor, so I have to go on the waiting list for a deceased donor, which relies on others registering their decision to donate and discussing it with their families”.

Wendy’s transplant journey first began in 2011, when she received a heart transplant. She had been diagnosed with post-partum dilated cardiomyopathy eight years before that, aged 23, after giving birth to her son Joshua.   

Those years involved heart rhythm problems, frequent hospital admissions, worsening heart failure, a cardiac arrest, and the constant fear of leaving her son motherless.  

Wendy said: “One of the lowest moments wasn’t medical, it was teaching my seven-year-old how to perform CPR and call 999 in case my heart stopped while we were alone.”  

Richard's story

Richard received a double-lung transplant in 2009. He was born with cystic fibrosis and, despite having good health in childhood, his health deteriorated in 2005 while at university.   

By 2009, his lung function was just 5% and he lived tethered to oxygen and CPAP machines, enduring nine “false alarm” transplant calls and a 3-year wait for new lungs.  

Richard said: “By the tenth, I was exhausted and close to giving up. The transplant came just in time. My surgeon later said that with the state of my old lungs they would probably have packed up altogether after a couple more weeks, so I was on borrowed time.  

“Being wheeled down to theatre I remember thinking about my donor and their family. I woke from surgery not having to fight for every breath for the first time in years.”   

Hope for the future

Wendy described the difficulties she now faces going back onto a transplant waiting list.  

She said: “We’re back to me having to rely on somebody else so that I can live and as well as the physically debilitating side of things, it is psychologically really hard. I've been through one transplant, but this one's different because now I've had a taste of life and I've been living it to the fullest.  

“People's lives depend on organ donation - there are more people needing an organ than there are donors and the statistics show you're more likely to need a transplant than you are to actually become an organ donor.”  

Richard said: “We met after our transplants, so I've always known Wendy when she’s been well. To see how much she’s declined in the last year is quite scary. As well as the restrictions on what we can do because of Wendy’s health, it’s also the uncertainty in terms of what’s going to happen longer term.  

“When you’ve got plans for the future you want to get on with life, but everything’s on pause again.  

“Signing the organ donor register doesn’t mean you will automatically become an organ donor, but it’s about raising that awareness that you could provide someone with a simple, ordinary life. That’s all people want when they’ve been critically ill with a failing organ, to live a normal life.”  

Despite knowing the long path ahead of them, as the wait for a kidney donor can be years, they remain hopeful and want to raise awareness of just how much difference signing the organ donor register can make.  “We have both promoted organ donation since our respective transplants, it is how we met, and having a joint story like ours makes it easier to do that as there is added interest. However, we never expected to be in the position of needing to wait for another transplant again,” said Richard. 

Wendy said: “We are trying to look at things positively and remain positive throughout it all. We keep holding on to hope, because without hope there is nothing.  

“‘Thank you’ is insufficient for the decade of life together our donors have granted us so far. We carry you in every breath Richard takes and every beat of my heart”.  

“If you haven’t yet, please register as an organ donor this Valentine’s Day—and just as importantly, talk to your family about your wishes. That one choice has the potential to create a future you’ll never see — but one that means everything to someone else”.