FOR seven months now, I have been living under a death threat. Outwardly, my life appears fine: I have a busy family life with three children at primary school; I've just completed writing and producing a four-part drama for ITV; I seem vital, strong, full of life. And why not? I eat healthily, I swim, I go to the gym every other day. Which makes it all the more surreal to know I have a tumour growing in my liver that will kill me unless I receive a liver transplant in the very near future.
I am only one of thousands of patients on organ transplant lists in Britain, living on our own, invisible, death row.
When I was diagnosed with a primary liver tumour in January, it wasn't the first time: four-and-half-years ago I had surgery to r
emove a tumour. Having had this surgery, a transplant is now the only treatment option. But more than treatment, transplant offers the possibility of a complete cure, of a body free of cancer cells.
When I was put on the transplant waiting list in February, my prospects were good. The tumour had been picked up early. At 49, I'm relatively young and fit – I haven't drunk alcohol for 15 years, haven't smoked in 20. Patients in my blood group, B, were being transplanted quite quickly, about every three or four months. The NHS was going to save my life.
Seven months later, things look very different. At the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, the transplant centre where I am a patient, blood group B transplants are down compared with previous years. For some reason no-one quite understands, there is now a shortage of blood group B organs in the UK.
I am heading for a crisis and so is the system. Patient numbers on the B list are growing and with that waiting times. This carries a lethal significance. In my case, if the tumour were to grow beyond a certain diameter, I would no longer be eligible for a transplant as the risk of cancer spreading to other organs would be considered too great.
If my tumour passes this limit before a donor becomes available, I will be taken off the list. I will be beyond help. The tumour will inexorably overwhelm my liver and kill me. Each day without a donor is a step closer to this calamity, to "going off the list". On the other hand, a donor means I get my life back.
It's a weird experience living with such extreme threat and promise.
It's why I'm staring into the bathroom mirror at 4am, still incredulous at this patient I've become. There are times the world he inhabits – hospitals, scans, donor organs – feels uncertain to me, alien, more like a dreamscape.
I enter into my normal life so intensely I lose all thought of "him" and his illness. On other occasions, there is only his overwhelming threat.
I'm living two parallel narratives with reality suspended as I wait for them to connect.
Waiting lists are everything. People wondered why Steve Jobs, suffering from liver cancer, chose a relatively obscure hospital in Memphis for his transplant. It has one of the shortest waiting times in America.
I keep working. I'm writing a new series for the BBC. After my first bout with cancer, I won an Emmy for my work on the final episodes of Prime Suspect. I poured myself into a dramatisation of The Passion for the BBC, identifying deeply with its themes of suffering and redemption.
I dealt even more directly with my experience of pain and hope in a screenplay, Gaza, about a secular Jewish doctor in the Middle East. Helen Mirren is to play the central character next year. Will I get to see the finished film? Who knows?
The phone could ring as I'm writing these words, when I'm in the shower, watching television. At any moment a lifesaving phone call could come.
On one level, you can say this is a deeply selfish article. I want to draw attention to the crisis for blood group B patients and organ donation because it affects me. It's true, but this situation is a daily reality for people all over Britain.
Men, women, children, our lives hang on the generosity of a stranger.
You are that stranger. If the world is in each one of us, you have the power to change the world.
FRANK DEASY: CV1960 Born in Ireland
1993: The Grass Arena nominated for a Bafta and wins best film award at Edinburgh Film Festival.
1997: Moves to Scotland.
2007: Nominated for two Baftas and wins Emmy for Prime Suspect: The Final Act.
2008: The Passion, starring James Nesbitt, airs.
2009: Work continues on Father And Son.
2010: Filming scheduled to start on new work, Gaza.
