A MUM who only had two weeks to live when she received a liver transplant has backed a call for more people to sign up as donors.

Cathy Jury was seriously ill and was sleeping about 20 hours a day having been treated for chronic active hepatitis.

But a liver from an organ donor in 1997 gave the Grove resident, then 23, a new chance of life.

The mum-of-one is now 42, and living with partner Stuart, and her son Bayley, six.

Ms Jury, who works as a business manager at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell Oxford, said: "Everything is going very well.

"Before I had the transplant I was very ill and I only had two weeks to live. The person who donated saved my life.

"I have had no problems at all with the liver being rejected and the transplant gave me a second chance."

Ms Jury has backed NHS Blood and Transplant's call for more people to sign up as donors as part of Organ Donation Week, which started on Monday.

Five people in Oxfordshire died last year before receiving the transplant they needed and there are 76 people in the county waiting for a donor.

After only a 48-hour wait for a donor Ms Jury was transferred from Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for her transplant operation.

She added: "I had a pager and carried it everywhere in case I was needed for the operation.

"The transplant changed my life and I would definitely urge more people to sign up. Everyone should consider it."

Ms Jury was told it would be impossible for her to have children naturally and too dangerous to conceive through IVF but after her second IVF attempt she gave birth to son Bayley in 2010.

Ms Jury's colleague Belinda Robinson, 50, who also works at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, received a kidney transplant in 2008.

Ms Robinson, from Hungerford, Berkshire, said: "My transplant took place at the Churchill Hospital. I had needed dialysis treatment for four years before that so the transplant was definitely life-changing.

"I would urge everyone to sign up – the more people the better.

"I got an allotment a year after the transplant to keep fit and I still enjoy it."

Mum-of-one Vicki Luker, 39, from Wantage, told earlier how she was on the waiting list for a full pancreas transplant to help stabilise her diabetes, which once caused her to black out and crash her car on the A34.

Sally Johnson, director of organ donation and transplantation for NHS Blood and Transplant, is urging people to join the NHS organ donor register.

Visit organdonation.nhs.uk or call the 24-hour donor line on 0300 123 23 23.