When Tracey Boyd woke up from vital surgery she knew her second chance at life came at a huge cost to another woman’s family.

The liver transplant she had undergone at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham after signing up for a new medical trial, meant she could finally make plans for a future with husband Mark.

But at the same time the donor’s family was in mourning. “The organ came from a lady who was in her 40s and it was a trauma case so it was so heartbreaking that she lost her life. I’m so damn grateful because it’s given me a new lease of life,” she said

The former health and safety officer worked at Great Western Hospital for eight years but left when her health declined after she was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in 2015.

She signed up to the Naples project, which uses pioneering technology to make more donor livers available by improving marginal organs using a machine that cleans and tests them before transplantation.

When she got the call on June 5 to say the operation would be going ahead she couldn’t believe it. “I didn’t really get a chance to think, it was all a bit of a whirlwind at the beginning because I had to go straight to the hospital for the surgery," she said.

“They said the liver had been offered to someone else but it wasn’t suitable for the patient. I’d signed up for this new trial where they can keep the liver in a Naples machine to keep the organ functioning so it was possible for me to have the liver instead. I’m glad I signed up for that, it just made sense.”

At the moment she is recovering in isolation at home in Freshbrook with Mark.“A few weeks ago I didn’t have a life and so now I’m just going to have to put up with having to stay at home because at least I get to live,” she said.

“I can still see my friends and family in the garden at a distance so it’s not terrible.”