MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands General survives liver cancer.

The Commander of the British land forces which liberated Stanley in the 1982 Falklands Conflict, Major General Sir Jeremy Moore, has been describing how a liver transplant saved his life when he was diagnosed as having liver cancer.

In gratitude to the medical teams who saved his life, he has embarked on a fund-raising initiative for London's Kings College Hospital liver transplant unit. He has so far raised more than £25,500 (about 37-thousand dollars). He aims to boost this to £30,000. Sir Jeremy was hailed as a hero when he took the surrender of the Argentine invasion force in 1982 and sent the famous message that the people of the Falkland Islands were once again living under the Government of their choice. Sir Jeremy returned to the Islands with Lady Moore in 1992 for the tenth anniversary and stayed with Mike and Phyllis Rendell . An avenue in Stanley is named after him. Sir Jeremy, now 73, has explained (in a newspaper article in the Daily Mail) that he fell ill in July last year and was urged by his wife, Veryan, a trained nurse, to seek medical help. He was told at Bath Clinic he had a cancerous tumour in his liver caused by a condition called haemochromatosis, which retains too much iron in the body.

Dramatic dash for liver transplant.

Sir Jeremy said:" Though the news was a bombshell, I wasn't frightened. I don't want to make great heroics of it, but for 36 years my life was soldiering and I have been shot at on a number of occasions, so there have been many times when I have expected not to survive". His options were a liver transplant, chemotherapy, surgery to remove the tumour, or do nothing and let the cancer it take its course. He chose a transplant, knowing that livers from dying donors on life support machines are available purely on clinical need and suitability, and that his B-positive blood group is not common. "This either meant I would have a very long wait....or that I might be the only suitable person if a B-positive donor organ came up....By an amazing stroke of luck, I got the phone call a fortnight after going on the waiting list". It was half past three in the morning. Within an hour a car arrived to whisk him to London's King's College Hospital. "I remember coming round in intensive care trussed up like a Christmas turkey, with tubes in every orifice as well as several places there aren't orifices!" The operation was a success, and he was home to celebrate Christmas wi