REPORTER Nick Statham’s wife was given a new lease of life with a double lung transplant, before finally losing her battle. Now he is calling for more people to become organ donors.

Anything that could end the agonising wait for an organ transplant currently facing some 6,500 desperately ill people in the UK is only to be welcomed.

The proposals to shift towards an 'opt-out' organ donation system based on ‘presumed consent’ will be a ray of hope for those anxiously hoping an organ can be found before it’s too late.

I watched my wife, Sian, desperately cling to life as cystic fibrosis destroyed her lungs — the hope of a phone call from Papworth Hospital the only hope of relief from her ever-worsening plight.

It was the early autumn of 2004, and we had not long moved in together when a bad chest infection caused Sian’s condition to deteriorate significantly.

She already had a regime familiar to the thousands of cystic fibrosis sufferers — daily injections of intravenous antibiotics, a cocktail of tablets and a special high-fat diet (cystic fibrosis affects the digestive system, too).

Hospital visits were nothing new to Sian of course, but now she was spending more and more time on the specialist cystic fibrosis ward.

At just 23 years old she was unable to go to work or go out and enjoy herself and was left housebound.

As her health continued to deteriorate alarmingly she became increasingly reliant on oxygen cylinders.

Eventually she was fitted with a ‘nippy’ — a non-invasive positive pressure mask — which forced oxygen into her lungs as they had become unable to do the job themselves.

Sian wore the nippy round-the-clock, even in bed, it was the one thing keeping her within a fighting chance of holding out for the transplant.

But it wasn’t a case of ‘sitting tight’ and waiting it out. Her condition was worsening all the time. Doctors eventually set the ‘nippy’ to its maximum setting. There was no more they could do to help her from this point.

Struggling for breath, eating and drinking were difficult, and her weight dropped as her body had to fight so hard to keep her alive.

The two constants in the life of someone awaiting an organ transplant are fear that time is running out and the desperate hope that the next phone call will be from their transplant centre — in Sian’s case, Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire.

Sian had at least three false alarms — including one particularly upsetting one when the transplant appeared to be going ahead, but was called off at the last minute, due to a problem with the donor lungs.

She showed incredible physical endurance and mental fortitude to keep going when every single day must have been a nightmare ordeal, the likes of which most of us will never face.

But, ultimately, Sian was one of the lucky ones.

After 10 months on the waiting list, the call came from Papworth — and Sian got her new lungs in June, 2005 — a day she came to call her ‘re-birthday’.

The first few days after the operation were ‘touch and go’, but she recovered well and more rapidly than doctors first expected.

Her life, once at best 'on hold', could begin again.

I was overjoyed as, obviously, was her whole family — parents Jan and Julian, brother Matt, sister Abbie — and my family, too.

After returning home she revelled in simple things, such as being able to walk into town and visit her favourite shops or cafes.

Her breathing was better than it had ever been and she was able to take long walks.

Impatient to get on with life, she soon started making plans to move out to the country, get a dog, and go on foreign holidays — all of which happened.

Her new lungs gave her a new lease of life which she seized with both hands — rock climbing, swimming, jewellery-making and Kung Fu were among the activities she threw herself into.

We also took part in the Great North Run together three times to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. And Sian also completed the Greater Manchester 10k for the charity.

She also enjoyed the chance to socialise again, enjoying music gigs and festivals headlined by her favourite bands, trips to the theatre, and nights on the town.

Luckily for me, Sian made it clear she had marriage in mind and I proposed to her during a holiday in Prague in 2007.

We married in 2009, with our pet dog, Jock, the guest of honour.

Sian got a new job working in Ashton-under-Lyne and we moved to Greater Manchester with Jock and pet cats in tow.

It was the start of another exciting chapter, but one that was cut devastatingly short when Sian fell in again.

Despite what some people may believe, transplants are a treatment, not a cure. Only about 50 per cent of lung transplants patients will survive for five years or more after having the procedure.

A wheezy, crackly chest that was first diagnosed as an infection was actually chronic rejection.

After another brave fight, Sian died on March 27, 2013, aged just 32. She was due to go on the list for a second transplant, but rejection happened so rapidly that this ‘long-shot’ was denied her.

But had it not been for the humanity and generosity of her donor, Sian would have been denied those seven years where she truly lived life to the fullest.

And those of us who loved her would have been denied the joy she brought into our lives over that cherished time.

Sian described herself as a 'proud transplant recipient' and was passionate about people signing the organ donation register.

But as well as being a recipient, she was also a donor as well. After she died, her kidneys were donated to two people in need of them. At her funeral her brother Matt described this gift as her 'final act of bravery'.

Last year, 500 chronically ill people died while waiting for a transplant. That is not a tolerable situation.

In my view the Government is making an important move in the right direction with its plans to move towards presumed consent — an opt-out rather than an opt-in system.

Many of people's fears over organ donation are driven by myths and a misunderstanding of how the system works.

Transplants are carried out at specialist centres and organs can be transported there from all over the country. I understand that even some parts of northern Europe were within Papworth's 'catchment area'.

The scenario of a transplant co-ordinator being based in a general hospital and lurking outside intensive care units in the hope of getting hold of an organ is complete fiction — albeit one given credence by some supposedly well-meaning TV dramas.

Donors and recipients also have to be of compatible blood types and a similar physical size for a transplant to even be deemed feasible.

And the donor organ is assessed for damage or disease before the transplant can be given the green light.

The transplant itself is an incredibly complex and high-risk procedure, it is not a 'given'.

Being on the organ donation register does not make it more likely that doctors will make less effort to save you if you have the misfortune to be in a life-threatening accident.

A system of presumed consent would lead to more lives being saved and desperately ill patients being spared the prolonged ordeal of a lengthy wait for a transplant.

The government has launched a consultation on the issue which can be found online at engage.dh.gov.uk/organdonation/