AN 18-YEAR-OLD student completed a charity skydive to mark a life-changing anniversary.

Liam Holmes raised a total of £1,053 for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation when he jumped from 15,000 feet.

Marking the anniversary of his liver transplant, which he received in 2007, Liam hopes to help others and inspire people to join the organ donor register.

He said: “I just thought well if I’m going to do something for charity and give something back to the people who practically saved my life, then I might as well do something big. When the door opens it becomes sort of real, overwhelming almost but when you get out of the plane all that fear turns into adrenaline straight away.”

Liam became seriously ill when he was seven-years-old with acute liver failure and was rushed to hospital where he was put on the urgent transplant list and received a liver within three hours.

His mother, Nicola Scott said: “He was in an induced coma for eight days. One day we went in and the nurse said to us he’s just opened his eyes for the first time. He actually came out of the intensive care unit on my birthday, and that still stands as my best birthday present ever.”

Liam now lives his life to the fullest, showing the difference a donated organ can make to somebody’s life. He is studying at Andover College to become an electrical engineer and is looking for work experience.

He said: “I didn’t know I was potentially going to die.

“It’s just made me appreciate life more, and just well you’re here now for the second chance, you might as well take it.

“People think that organ donation is just like a shot in the dark, you think it’s not going to go somewhere, it will.”

Mrs Scott added: “It’s the biggest gift of all.

“There’s so many people that don’t get round to signing up to the register because they don’t want to think about it, but it’s very simple.

“One liver from someone, it can save up to five or six people. We were in hospital for over two months and when you see someone the way I saw Liam the day after the operation, he had gone from yellow and his cheeks were going pink. And when you see these other children round the wards convert across, it’s just an amazing thing, when you think that someone would have gone to the grave with those [organs] and it changed several children’s lives.”