'Somewhere a family lost a loved one, but organ donation gave my sister a second chance' 

Legislation on organ donation is welcome and long overdue: It will help save other lives

Sinead Lowndes in hospital after the transplant.

There is a stasis that comes with organ donation. A waiting.

When you are told that a loved one has had an organ fail them, fallen to an invasionary force, you enter something of an emotional holding pattern, scared to hope and more frightened of fear.

It is a waiting equivalent to walking to an emotional precipice from which there is no return. You stand on the ledge, knowing you will have to leave at some point but without a say in how, or why.

Sinead Lowndes with husband Stuart and daughter Paige.

You carry that knowledge in all of its forms — emotionally in the worry for your loved one and physically in the near breathlessness of dread and the pools of tears which seem to be constantly pooling in your eyes, pleading permission for a suitable place to remove the finger from the emotional dyke and let it all go.

You carry those things while your loved one fights an unimaginable physical and mental battle until the call does come.

In my case, it came while my sister was 450km away in the care of Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge at around midday on an overcast Friday afternoon.

A donor had been found for Sinead and she was going to theatre. The operation, with its complications and complexity, would take 12 to 14 hours, both an eternity and too short a time to process the enormity of the situation.

At 4am, a phonecall from her husband — all had gone well and she was in recovery.

In the weeks that followed in the ICU, through further operations, blood transfusions and flights in and out of Stansted, we as her family had time to process the question of fortune.

We were, and are, keenly aware that our good fortune came on the worst day of another family's life. Somewhere in the UK, a family lost a loved one and ours got a second chance.

There is no logic to it, but we think of the donor and their family every day.

My sister has borne her illness, a cruel confluence of genetic mutation and pure bad luck, with the kind of strength that you think impossible until you see it up close.

That kind of strength is the kind that people don't want to ever find out that they have because it comes from a well reserve that we never want to tap. Our break in case of emergency strength.

Around 250 people a year in Ireland are called on to find that strength, but many will not be that lucky. They will die while they wait on a transplant.

Sinead Lowndes: A second chance.

The news that the Government is finally bringing forward legislation which will assume the default position that a person is an organ donor is incredibly welcome.

Full international experience varies, but there has been some suggestion that opt out systems produce vastly more donors than opt in systems.

Bizarrely, some see this as some form of dystopian government overreach, ignoring that opting out will be very simple and that next of kin will retain the final say.

If you decide it is not for you, opt out.

This long-delayed legislation merely makes a commitment to increasing the pool of those who can help the sickest among us at the most desperate hour. There is no plan B for most transplant patients, we need more donors.

We as a family were lucky. Sinead's donor and those who donated blood have helped her get home to her husband and daughter.

This legislation may help other others. And that is a law worth passing.