Teen donor inspires mother

Wendy Hastie holds a picture of daughter Lauren, an organ donor at 17. Picture / Greg Bowker

Lauren Hastie was just 15 when she decided to become an organ donor.

"I distinctly remember, we were in the kitchen and she was on one side of the bench and I was on the other. She said I would like to do that and ticked the box [on her driver's licence]," her mother Wendy recalls.

"I said, 'That's nice dear'. You don't ever think that's going to happen to you, but it did."

At 17, Lauren, who had just started a chef course at the Manukau Institute of Technology, was seriously injured in a car accident. It was a Saturday night and she had gone with friends to buy pizza.

When Ian and Wendy Hastie arrived at Middlemore Hospital later that summer evening they were told the prognosis for their daughter - the one with "a zest for life who was always laughing" - was not good.

"She was lying there as if she was asleep in bed. The only sign of any accident was a little mark on the side of her head," Mrs Hastie said. The next day, tests confirmed Lauren was brain-dead.

Still in shock, Mrs Hastie remembered that conversation nearly three years earlier, and told doctors her daughter wanted to donate her organs.

Lauren donated her kidneys, lungs, liver, pancreas, heart valves and corneas. She could not donate her heart, which had been damaged when doctors stabilised her.

"I look back now and I think it's amazing for a 15-year-old to have that sort of foresight and I am really proud of her for that," said Mrs Hastie.

The family have been contacted by two of the nine people who benefited from Lauren's organs and Mrs Hastie has met one of them.

"It's wonderful to see someone so well and healthy, and so grateful. His family and friends don't have to go through the grief that we have had to go through of losing somebody. He's got another chance at life."

Mrs Hastie, who has since decided to become a donor herself, wants other families to talk to each other about what they want. After Lauren's death all her friends went home and discussed organ donation with their parents.

"It's just the most amazing thing. It's helped me in the healing process to know that a life wasn't such a waste, that the accident wasn't such a waste."