Double mourning prompts donor call

Claire Aubrey (47) and David Aubrey (49) will be remembered in separate funeral services in Dunedin today, three days after they lost battles against conditions ultimately caused by Alpha1 – antitrypsin deficiency, a disorder which affects the lungs and the liver.

Miss Aubrey, who learned four months ago she would need a liver transplant but might have waited up to two years to go on an active waiting list, died at Auckland Hospital just before 3am on Wednesday, after succumbing to an infection after an operation on a perforated ulcer.

Mr Aubrey died in the Otago Hospice about eight and a-half hours later, after his body rejected a bilateral lung transplant which gave him 16 more months with his wife Karla, and now 2-year-old son.

Miss Aubrey was flown to Auckland for an emergency procedure last Monday. Her mother and sisters followed, but the group had to split up when Mr Aubrey was admitted to the hospice the following Monday, and they learned Miss Aubrey would not recover.

The upset and stunned family was reunited after Miss Aubrey died, when grieving mother Nola and sister Helen flew back to Dunedin to be at Mr Aubrey's side.

At Mr Aubrey's family home yesterday, his wife Karla, and sisters Helen, Karen, and Trish, said they hoped the pain the family endured would encourage people to make a sacrifice that will give other families hope.

The women urged people to become organ donors, and for their families to accept and support a person's decision to donate, so that the seriously ill could get life-saving organs when they needed them.

"For us, it is an important thing to do, because we have seen the good things that come when people make that decision, and when families let it happen," sister Karen said.

"We know it is a hard decision to make, but we also know how hard it is when the donations aren't there. It gives hope, because without it, there is no hope, and a life will end."

Mr Aubrey received his transplant after four years being monitored by specialists, and two weeks on an "active" waiting list. The operation in June 2004 came after an anonymous family was told "someone they loved would not recover, and they made a selfless sacrifice" to donate the organs.