Goodbye Mandy - you had the courage of a lion ..... Hartlepool pays its last respects to brave Mandy Andrews

Family members gathered for her funeral at St Aidan's Church to pay tribute to a woman who had lived a life which was 'full of laughter’.

They heard about Mandy’s love of family and friends as well as her infectious laugh.

The 53-year-old was a beloved figure in the town and had been ever since she had a heart and lung transplant in April 1986. Mail readers have described her as not just a local hero but a national one.

Her brother Simon Andrews read a moving eulogy at the funeral. He said his sister had 'endured so much in her time with us, with little fuss and the strength of 100 men."

Simon praised ‘the amazing surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub and all the medical teams at Freeman Hospital and Harefield who worked miracles over the years to keep Mandy alive.”

Simon also took time to remember three other families.

He said: “I want to recognise those families who in 1986, 1994, and 2011 also lost a loved one. In their grief they cared enough to tick a box for organ donation. They gave our Mand the gift of life three times and WOW she lived 34 years of it with us all.”

Seven months after her 18th birthday, she became the first person in the region to receive a new heart and lungs when she had her first transplant in 1986.

She had the six-hour operation at Harefield Hospital, in Middlesex, after a six-month wait for a donor.

Mandy defied the odds all her life. Years later, she received another set of lungs and was thought to be the first patient to have undergone the procedure following the previous transplant.

The former Thornhill School pupil later received a donor kidney in May 2011.

But Mandy became ill in the summer of this year and passed away in hospital on Saturday, November 21. She was surrounded by her loved ones including Simon and Mandy’s son Harry, 20.

Today, Simon hailed his sister as 'fiercely determined to live a full and happy life and through the love given by my Mam and Dad and family and friends."

News that Mandy had died was met by an outpouring of love for her by Hartlepool Mail readers last month. Hundreds of them left messages of tribute and hailed her as ‘blessed with the gift of being great and memorable.’

They said she was a beautiful lady and an inspiration to all transplant patients.

Mandy had got her wish to see her son Harry grow into a young man, and now she is at peace with Mam and Dad and her beloved Sheila, said Simon.

He said the family was broken-hearted, but added: “I stand here proud to call her my sister and will remember her always as vibrant, stubborn, outspoken, loving and caring and full of that life that those donors gave her.”

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