The Lottie’s Lifeline campaign hopes to encourage more people to sign up to the Organ Donor Register. Health Correspondent Alison Dayani investigates how an unexpected death brought happiness to at least seven other families.

THE sudden “freak” death of spirited nurse Pam Taylor from a brain haemorrhage days before Christmas was as devastating as it was unexpected for her family.

But the mum-of-three’s death helped save or enhance the life of at least seven people.

Pam’s husband John made the decision to allow doctors to use her heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas and corneas from her eyes after she was declared brain dead in hospital.

So far, five men and women’s lives have been saved or extended and two men were given the gift of eyesight because of the organ donation.

Daughter Sarah Taylor, who is also a nurse at Birmingham Children’s Hospital intensive care ward, said the decision eased her grief knowing her mother’s legacy to enhance lives would live on.

Grandmother-of-eight Pam, from Muckley Corner, Lichfield, was 62 years old when she suddenly collapsed at work as lead child protection nurse in Staffordshire on December 22, 2007. “Mum’s death was completely out of the blue and a freak incident,” said Sarah, aged 32.

“We got a phone call from her work to say she had fainted and been sent to hospital but when we got there, the doctors said mum had suffered a significant brain haemorrhage and wouldn’t survive.

“She had a second bleed in the brain and was left brain dead on Christmas Eve three days later and it was only machines keeping her alive in intensive care.

“As mum was a nurse, she gave blood and had been very much in favour of transplants, so we asked the hospital staff if she could be a candidate for organ donation, which they were delighted with.

“The transplant recipients were quickly organised and at 10.30pm on Christmas Eve, the operation took place and the patients got their new organs in time for Christmas Day.

“The hardest part of dealing with it is that your relative dies in theatre, that’s when the heart stops beating.