Forty years on borrowed time

Lee Martell had a kidney transplant aged 16, and these days thanks her donor by staying engaged in life. Photo / Janna Dixon

Almost 40 years have passed, but Lee Martell just wants to know his name.

In March 1972, the young Auckland teen faced an uncertain future as a hereditary disease sucked the life out of her kidneys.

On a Waikato road, that same year, a middle-aged man lost his life in a car crash. The next day one of his kidneys was transplanted into Martell's frail body.

Four decades on, she is one of the country's longest surviving organ donor recipients - but would like to know the name of the man who, by losing his life, gave her a second shot. Efforts to find him through hospital records have been unsuccessful. "I'm hugely grateful - he and his family gave a 16-year-old another chance at life, one that desperately wanted a normal life."

The mother-of-one has achieved plenty since - not least having daughter Jo and seeing grandchildren Nikau Lee and Manaia, but also a long career working in medical microbiology. The stamps in her passport prove her love of overseas travel.

She also won a gold medal in a road cycling race at the World Transplant Games in 1993, and a bronze medal at the same games a few years later.

"I think being really engaged in life is the best way of saying thanks to my donor and his family."

"It's a long time, 40 years on borrowed time ... but I'm still fairly healthy for someone with a 92-year-old kidney."

"I just feel so much for anyone waiting for a kidney, like Jonah [Lomu, who is back on dialysis after his transplant failed]. It's never a life, it's an existence. You can't hold down a job, you can't travel." She has urged her friends and family to consider organ donation and discuss their choice with family.