Sheffield woman meets recipient of sister’s hands

Watch the moment Deborah Gosling, from Sheffield, met Corinne Hutton - the transplant patient who received her twin sister’s hands.

Transcript

00:00Julie was very different to myself, totally different personalities, she was

00:06such a soft, caring person, she was absolutely fine. Two minutes later,

00:14Deborah, Deborah, she says you can't go, she says I've got a headache, you need to

00:18phone an ambulance and then she started mumbling her words. So I got her in the

00:24car, took her to hospital, she got worse and worse en route, a nurse and doctor

00:29came on scene and took her into the resus room and she was unconscious from

00:37then and I knew that I'd lost my sister then, I knew. I was unfortunate enough to

00:46have a bad cough which led to pneumonia and the pneumonia led to sepsis but I

00:55didn't die so very, very lucky in that respect but unlucky enough that my

01:00extremities were starved of oxygen and I lost my hands and my legs as a result.

01:08When the specialist nurse came to see me, it wasn't a hard decision, I said

01:14straight away, no problem, definitely. A new thing about giving, donating the

01:22organs as in your limbs and I was quite took back by experience because I've not

01:27heard of it before but to take Julie's limbs and to give somebody a chance of

01:33enhancing their life is absolutely incredible.

01:38The call comes completely out the blue and they'd found a donor and it was all

01:45systems go, almost instantly at that point, your thoughts go to the donor

01:52family. We're in my excitement, my family's excitement, we know all too well

01:59what they're going through. Meeting the family was something I was very prepared

02:07to do if they wanted to meet me.

02:11Deborah? Hi. Corrine, how you doing? Pleased to meet you. Hi Corrine.

02:17Shake your hand because I can. Yeah. Is that a good enough grip? That's fantastic.

02:22Can I give you a hug? Yeah.

02:32You're very brave, have a good look.

02:35You have beautiful hands. I know that. I know that, they were perfect when I got them.

02:42They're just wonderful and every day they're doing more than they were the day before.

02:45She would be so proud, she would, absolutely so proud.

02:53For somebody to use her hands is absolutely incredible.

03:02The difference for me has been absolutely life-changing. I'm so grateful

03:09to the family for making that really, really hard decision and I'll never

03:15forget that I'm lucky, I'll never forget where they've come from and hopefully

03:20I'll give them a good life.