DonateLife Week 2021: Australia's first intestinal transplant recipient calls for donor registrations

After a decade of slow organ failure spreading to his liver and pancreas, Mr Cole became the recipient of an Australian-first multi organ transplant operation - in which he says he was "opened up like a suitcase".

Mr Cole was the recipient of an intestinal, liver and pancreas transplant, the peak of a long history of being in and out of hospital.

"They put me on medication to feed me after my bowels and stomach stopped working, but the problem was the medicine to feed me was also killing me at the same time," he said.

"It was breaking my liver down and destroying my liver."

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As organ failure slowly set in, Mr Cole spent his early 20s researching ways to fix his potentially fatal condition.

"I had a long medical history where all of these doctors have done a lot of things to me and they said look, the only chance that you'll ever have a long life is to have an intestinal transplant," he said.

"I said great, who does them, and they told me no one in Australia, I would have to go overseas."

The answer did not sit well with Mr Cole, who contacted as many surgeons and specialists he could find about the operation.

In 2007, while attending a conference in Brisbane Mr Cole met a professor from the United States who he told his story to.

The professor introduced Mr Cole to many people, including Dr Bob Jones from the Austin Hospital. Together Mr Cole and Dr Jones worked on a plan to conduct the risky operation.

Mr Cole said the first hurdle, finding someone who could provide the right kind of organs, took the longest

"We spent years and years getting worked up and waiting for a perfect donor to come along," he said.

"The thing with having a perfect donor come along is that it had to be the right shape, it had to fit my body, the same blood type - all of these boxes had to be ticked.

"And then one fateful morning, my fiance and I got this phone call. Out of the blue the hospital rings up and says 'Mr Cole you have to get to the hospital quickly we have a donor for you'."

Decades of pain and searching had come to a head, and in 2010 Mr Cole and his fiancee raced to the Austin Hospital to go under the knife - not knowing if he would make it out the other side.

"We always knew the risk that the possibility of it actually working was very slim. It was a big gamble and we were just fortunate that we had a team of really good surgeons at the Austin Hospital and the perfect donor," he said.

The operation lasted 14 hours.

Mr Cole remembered a Channel Seven reporter at the time describing him as a 'human suitcase'.

The multi-organ transplant Mr Cole received was a pioneering surgery at the time, and is still very rare, with only around one or two intestinal transplants performed every year.

Mr Cole said the support he received from the team at the Austin helped him through recovery.

"They thought I would be in the hospital for six months to a year. I was out of hospital for 40 days," he said.

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"It comes down to having a great team look after you, the doctors, the nurses, everyone who was involved."

As part of DonateLife week Mr Cole has called for more people to sign-on as organ donors.

He said his own experience showed just how valuable having a wide donor base was in finding the right organs.

"Having a suitable, compatible donor. That is the thing about the push to get more people to register as donors," he said.

"We need to have as many options as we can to find the perfect donor for the amount of sick people that are on the waiting lists.

"The majority of people in Australia are all for organ donation and are willing, but they are unsure if they are registered or not."

Eleven years on from the procedure, Mr Cole is thriving, and said receiving the right organs changed his life.

"I was probably three months away from dying, there was no hope, I didn't have a license, I didn't have a job, I wasn't married. Now I am married, I have a son, I work full time at Australia Post," he said.

"Don't get me wrong, donating an organ is a massive thing to think of when you have just lost a loved one. But here you are, out of something really tragic, you can do something great, by saving multiple people or improving multiple people's lives.

"Have a think about it, talk to your family, talk to your friends and check to see if you are registered. If it is something that you want to do, register."

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