A DEVOTED Sheffield mum died on her 47th birthday from kidney failure after spending three years on the waiting list for an organ transplant.
Joy Dodd - an ex girlfriend of Def Leppard rocker Rick Savage - had been on dialysis after suffering kidney failure brought on by the diabetes she had suffered since childhood.
She leaves a 10-year-old daughter, Francesca, and devastated husband Sim.
Today Sim backed The Star's Gift of Life campaign aimed at signing thousands of readers to the national Organ Donor Register, and said a transplant would have prolonged Joy's life.
"There is such a shortage of organs and this is what people need to be more aware of," he said.
"If people could see how those waiting are suffering - particularly those needing a kidney - and the difference a transplant can make, everyone would sign up."
Joy was diagnosed with diabetes when she was nine and was initially told she should not have children.
Sim, 47, said she partied through her 20s and spent a lot of time on the road with her then-boyfriend Rick Savage.
A chance meeting in Napoleon's Casino brought Sim and Joy together, after they recognised one another from their days at Tapton School in Crosspool.
"We went on for an Indian meal and that was that - we were together from then on," he said.
The couple decided to try for a baby three years later, after encouragement from doctors in Sheffield, and Francesca was born prematurely but healthy in 1998.
Joy was taken into intensive care but recovered, and it was not until around six years later that her kidneys began to be affected.
She was told she had to go on peritoneal dialysis - a machine that can be used at home to remove waste from the blood through a solution in the stomach - while a suitable donor was found.
Both Sim and Joy's brother Russell Major offered their kidneys but neither were suitable and, when a matching organ was eventually found, it was later discovered to be diseased.
Despite the setbacks, and the illness that left Joy unable to climb stairs at their Broomhill home some days, Sim said his wife fought a very brave battle.
Sim, who owns Band-Tite steel sign fixings business , said: "She never complained about her illness. She was always more bothered about how other people were rather than herself. She never had a bad word to say about anybody. She was an example to everybody.
"She had a good life, a simple life. We liked fish and chips on a Friday and the match on a Saturday. She was a down to earth Sheffield woman who lived for her family. Francesca was the light of her life."
Urging people to sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register, Sim said: "In a lot of countries you have to sign if you don't want your organs to be taken. Here you have to sign if you do."
- Donations in Joy's memory to SAKA - Sheffield Area Kidney Association - c/o John Fairest Funeral Home, 10-56 Penistone Road North, Sheffield, S6 1LQ
The Star's Gift of Life campaign is aiming to add the names of 25,000 readers to the Organ Donor Register by August, when the 31st Westfield Health British Transplant Games take place in Sheffield.
Currently 8,000 people in the UK are waiting for a new kidney, liver, lung or heart. But a shortage of organ donors means hundreds people are dying on the waiting list each year.
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