‘I tried to rescue my husband with CPR when he had a brain bleed – although I lost him, his organs have saved 3 people’

A mother who attempted to save her husband’s life with emergency CPR after he suffered a severe bleed on the brain has said she felt “carried” through grief by the fact that her fast response meant his organs could be donated to change three people’s lives.

Bindhu Brion Xavier, 51, a nurse living in Manchester, said her husband first complained of a headache in the early afternoon of November 16 2014, for which she gave him both paracetamol and ibuprofen.

But by 11pm her husband, Brion Xavier, then 41, a professional driver, complained of pain at the back of his neck so Bindhu called an out-of-hours GP.

While Bindhu was on the phone to emergency services, she said she heard a “snoring noise” and turned around to see her husband unconscious and unresponsive, with his tongue blocking his airway causing the sound, so she immediately began CPR.

Within minutes, paramedics arrived and performed further resuscitation on Brion, before they rushed him to Wythenshawe Hospital. He stayed in ICU for three days before brainstem testing confirmed the brain was no longer capable of supporting life due to a severe bleed.

While Bindhu tragically lost her husband, she was told that it was her quick response of CPR that meant Brion’s organs were able to be donated to save three people’s lives, including both of his kidneys and his liver.

Even though the whole of the UK now operates an opt-out system for organ donation – meaning all eligible adults are automatically considered to have agreed to donate their organs and tissue upon their death, unless they have explicitly recorded a decision not to donate – Bindhu now helps advocate for organ, blood and stem cell donation, particularly among ethnic minority communities.

Bindhu told PA Real Life: “One day Brion was fine and we were all together, the next day he was in hospital with a brain haemorrhage.

“We don’t know what’s around the corner, but Brion’s death has drilled into me that… unless we talk about (organ donation) and make it a normal conversation in people’s households, we won’t get anywhere with this.

“Even with my husband, he wasn’t open to the idea of it at first, and it was only when it hit close to home when a friend of ours was diagnosed with cancer that you realise how precious life can be.”

Bindhu and Brion, both originally from India, moved in together in Manchester after they were married in February 2003, and went on to have two children: Austin, 22, and Ashlene, 18.

Throughout their relationship, Bindhu said Brion’s health was “good” because they liked going on walks together and he “never needed to go” to doctors.

Every two years, when they would go back to India to visit family and friends, they would get full screening tests – including X-rays, bloodwork, angiograms and stress tests – and Bindhu said all of Brion’s came back “fine” a month before.

So, when Brion complained of a headache at around 2pm on Sunday November 16 2014, Bindhu assumed it might just be a seasonal cold or flu and gave him both paracetamol and ibuprofen.

By the time she was heading off for her night shift as an ICU nurse at Wythenshawe Hospital starting at 7.30pm, Brion’s headache persisted and he was doing steam inhalations to try to clear it.

“I actually started teasing him by asking if it was a man-flu,” Bindhu said, before she gave him more pain relief.

At around 11pm, during a 1.5-hour break at work, Bindhu said she “just wanted to see if Brion was OK” so she asked her manager if she could go home to check on him – something Bindhu said she had “never done” before.

When Bindhu got home, she found Brion sitting on their bed in the dark so she turned the light on and noticed he was squinting in the light. He also complained of pain at the back of his neck.

Thinking it might be meningitis, Bindhu got Brion to touch his chin to his chest – to check for a stiff neck, a primary warning sign of meningitis – which he was able to do, and she took his temperature, which was normal.

She said she decided to call an out-of-hours GP after noticing “beads of sweat” on her husband’s forehead.

Bindhu said: “As I was kneeling beside him and relaying information to the doctor… I suddenly heard a snore and when my gaze fell on his face, he had collapsed and was unresponsive.

“That ‘snore’ was from his tongue blocking his airway… then I felt his pulse and it was going down.”

Bindhu hung up and called 999, who advised her to pull her husband on to the ground and start CPR.

Within minutes, paramedics arrived and Brion was rushed to the same hospital Bindhu works at.

Over three days, doctors learned Brion had a grade 5 subarachnoid haemorrhage – a rare type of stroke that causes bleeding on the brain.

According to the NHS, the main symptoms are an extremely painful, sudden and lasting headache, neck pain or stiffness, feeling and being sick, being very sensitive to light, having a seizure or shaking uncontrollably, fainting, feeling sleepy or being confused, drooping on one side of your face, slurred speech, or weakness on one side of your body.

After brainstem testing on Brion’s third day in ICU, the decision was made to take him off life support, but not before Bindhu disclosed Brion’s wishes to donate his organs.

Because Bindhu had gone home by chance during her break and started CPR as soon as Brion had his brain haemorrhage, she said his organs were deemed viable for transplant.

“I believe I was supposed to come home that day in order to preserve his organs for someone else,” Bindhu said.

“When I told the consultant to call the organ donation specialist nurses in, she got up from her seat and hugged me.”

The mother of two has since received cards from recipients whose lives were changed by Brion’s organ donations.

Bindhu has turned her grief into action, becoming actively involved in Upahaar, a charity initiative by her friend, Agimol Pradeep – who used to work in the kidney transplant ward at Manchester Royal Infirmary – which has registered more than 10,000 organ and stem cell donors.

In particular, she is encouraging people of colour to register as blood and stem cell donors as, according to NHS Blood and Transplant, only 11% of people registered as potential donors through the NHS Stem Cell Donor Registry are from ethnic minorities, and fewer than 5% of blood donors who gave blood in the last year were from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

“Organ and stem cell donation can be a gift of life for someone,” Bindhu said.

“I can’t think of a better gift than that.”

Agimol Pradeep won the Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award 2026 in September and plans to use the 250,000 dollar prize to expand organ and stem cell donation: asterguardians.com/.