Born with one kidney, Tyrone started on dialysis to clean his blood at 18-years-old.

Before his transplant, he had to be on dialysis for six hours, every second day for 11 months.

Now 30-years-old, Tyrone is forever grateful to the deceased donor who helped give him a second chance at life.

“I keep saying ‘thank you’ to someone that I even don’t know,” he said.

Tyrone said it was scary and traumatising at the time of the transplant, but now he’s the healthiest he’s ever been.

“It was a big mental challenge at the time but we got through it,” he said.

His love for football hasn’t changed in that 11 years since the kidney donation, and now Tyrone plays for the Dubbo CYMS and goes to Crossfit.

“Now I can do what I want instead of being on a machine,” he said.

Tyrone works in schools across Central West NSW delivering Aboriginal cultural programs.

His work takes him as far as Broken Hill to Lightning Ridge.

With DonateLife Week 2018 coming up soon, from July, 29 to August, 5.

Tyrone hopes to encourage everyone, especially Aboriginal people, to not take life for granted.

“Because it can be gone in the blink of an eye,” he said.

“Be healthy and make better choices.”

DonateLife Week is the national awareness week to promote organ and tissue donation in Australia.

There are around 1,400 Australians currently wait-listed for a transplant at any one time, and a further 12,000 people on dialysis of which many would benefit from a kidney transplant.

Organ donation is a rare event – only about one-two per cent of people who die in hospital are eligible to donate their organs. However, many more people have the potential to become tissue donors.

The gift of organ and tissue donation gives recipients a second chance at experiencing all of the love, joy and adventure that life has to offer.

Thousands of Australians and their families are benefiting from the generosity of organ and tissue donors and their families.

In New South Wales, you can no longer register your donation decision via your driver’s licence.

The Australian Organ Donor Register is the only register to record your decision to become and organ and tissue donor.

Registering as an organ and tissue donor takes less than a minute, and could one day save the lives of many.

Australians can support DonateLife Week by:

• Making their decision count by registering as an organ and tissue donor at register.donatelife.gov.au 

• Sharing their donation decision with their families.

• Sharing DonateLife content on social media – available at donatelife.gov.au