“His gift gave us hope”: Family reflects on life-saving organ donation
Family of Jack Baker say his decision to donate saved lives and gave them hope
This Organ Donation Week, the family of Somerset nurse Jack Baker are urging people to talk to their loved ones about their wishes.
Jack, a senior intensive care nurse at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, died suddenly in 2020 after suffering a brain bleed while cycling home from a shift. He was 28. His organs went on to save or transform four lives.
His father, David Baker, said: “He was passionate about his job and organ donation. We knew that because he was always going on about it.”
His mother, Helen Baker, said: “Jack was ICU. He was a senior ICU nurse at Southmead Hospital. He left a 12-hour day shift, cycled home and had a bleed on his brain on his way home. He went back to where he had just left, Southmead, and was looked after by his colleagues until he donated.”
Helen said her son was passionate about organ donation long before his death: “We’d always spoken about it at home. If anything happened to us, we’d like to go on to be an organ donor. Jack worked closely with the organ donation team in ICU and he eventually wanted to be part of the team. He saw the donor side and also the recipient side. It’s a positive that comes out of a very awful negative.”
She added: “People need to have the conversation. I think he saw lots of opportunities that were missed by families not knowing what their loved ones would have wished for. Rather than make the decision, they said no.”
For Helen and David, those conversations at home meant they were in no doubt about what their son wanted. Helen said: “We were very lucky because we had done that. When you’re told the news that there is no hope, you do have in your head: well, we spoke about it, we knew it was his wishes. That was such a great thing, that we didn’t have any doubt in our mind to add to our grief.”
She said organ donation gave them strength in the darkest moments: “Everything about organ donation for us has been a bonus, an absolute bonus with our grief. That’s the only way you can look at it. It gave us comfort and hope. I honestly can’t imagine if we had lost Jack and he hadn’t gone on to do this heroic thing.”
The family have since met some of the people who received Jack’s organs. Helen said: “We’ve met the recipient of his liver and we’ve had contact with a recipient of one of his kidneys. We know the heart’s good and we know that man is happy. That’s great.”
David said those meetings brought huge comfort: “The liver recipient wrote to us, even from hospital. He just sent a thank-you card with his name in it and it was everything. Eventually we maintained contact with him. We visited him, we speak to him and send cards. It was lovely.”
The Bakers now spend much of their time encouraging others to have the same conversation Jack had with them. David said: “People really do need to talk to their families about organ donation. Your family have to make the final decision, and they can say no. So it’s really, really important they know what you want.”
Helen added: “If we hadn’t had organ donation in our life, we would be somewhere else now. It’s given us comfort in our grief, and I still feel it, five years on. When we hear about organ donation on the radio or television, I think: our Jack did that.”