Adam Alderson

Adam Alderson is the world's first survivor of a multi-organ transplant for a rare abdominal cancer (Pseudomyxoma Peritonei) which saw him have almost every single one of his abdominal organs transplanted at once (stomach, duodenum, small bowel, large bowel, pancreas, spleen, gallbladder, appendix, abdominal wall and most of his liver), and now has someone else’s belly skin, cesarean scar, and a thin line of their pubic hair.

 

It took 30 medics working shifts over 17 hours to remove and replace Adam’s organs (in what’s officially known as a modified multi visceral organ transplant coupled with radical tumor debulking of rare abdominal cancer, Pseudomyxoma Peritonei), and take out a 10kg tumour. After being told he had two years to live, Adam is telling his story ten years later.

 

This is the gut-wrenching (quite literally) journey of a man whose refusal to accept his death sentence would mean taking on one of the biggest surgical procedure ever performed, leaving him with more of someone else's body than his own.

 

There are currently around 7,000 people waiting and hoping to receive donated organs in the UK, and around 1 in 3 families actually overturn their loved ones’ decision to become a donor. While there is a fair amount of books available about organ donation and transplant surgery, almost all of them are written by doctors and academics. Adam's book (Life On Extra Time) will serve as an inspiring companion and supportive friend to other patients faced with an organ transplant - who will find themselves in a very lonely place.

 

Waiting for a transplant is an incredibly morbid and unique place to be, and despite the knowledge of the procedure that doctors and academics have, they don’t know exactly how it feels to be waiting for someone else to die in order for you to be able to live.

 

Life On Extra Time will support both patients and caregivers, to help them find the strength and hope they need. It could also be an empathetic accompaniment for doctors and professionals working with transplant patients, and to donor families who will find comfort in knowing how their loved one changed someone’s life.

 

What Adam did next would take the whole medical community by surprise. In the years that followed Adam and his wife Laura set out to make the very most of his new life. Taking on some of the worlds biggest endurance challenges and trekking across the world in a clapped out old car more suitable for granny to do her shopping in than the vast desert of Kazakhstan. But following Adam's last scan he and Laura got the news they feared the most. The cancer is back ! Now Adam faces further intervention and treatments to hold the cancer back once more. At a time when Adam and Laura should have been celebrating his 10 year anniversary of the day he underwent his massive surgery. He was in hospital having surgery to remove this relentless cancer from spreading. 

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