Nine Months of Freedom

Today is the nine month anniversary of my mum giving me a kidney. It hasn't been a smooth nine months, I'm three stone heavier than I have ever been due to the steroids and I now have type 2 diabetes which can be attributed to my anti-rejection medication. But still, I'd take obesity and insulin over dialysis any day of the week.

Dialysis is quite simply the worst thing I have ever or am likely to ever experience. It is relentless in taking over your life. I found I was unable to do anything without having to consider how it would affect my treatment. What I could eat or drink, when I could make plans to see people and having to give up work. Holidays were out of the question. There is no break from dialysis. You HAVE to go otherwise you will die.

During the time I was ill I not only had dialysis to deal with, I also had to cope with having two major operations to remove my rugby ball sized broken kidneys, I developed a hole in my stomach which caused internal bleeding and nearly killed me twice, I needed 6 blood transfusions, I had several fits and my phosphate levels were dangerously high. During treatment for the hole in my stomach the doctors also found pre-cancerous cells that they had to remove. And all that is only the half of it.

I had to give up work which was soul destroying for me. I know that might sound ridiculous as we all hate getting up on Monday mornings and trekking to the office but my parents have always instilled a strong work ethic in me. I had never been unemployed since the age of 15 when I used to help out in a sandwich shop on Saturdays and school holidays. I had always earned my own money and I had built up a successful career as a legal secretary. I was earning well over £30,000 a year in London but when my health got too bad we made the decision to move to Bournemouth as my parents live here and it's where I went to school. I got a job with the NHS and my wages halved but after a few months the decision was made that the only way forward was to remove my kidneys and start dialysis and that was it. No more work for me. I went from earning what I considered to be a small fortune to relying on Rich for everything. I am fiercely independent and it was not easy.

I lost most of my friends because of kidney failure. There is only so many times a person can invite you out only to have you call it off due to ill health before they stop calling. Equally, there is only so many times someone can deal with a grumpy ill person before they become frightened of saying something to upset you. In the beginning I had a hard time listening to what I deemed to be trivial problems like "oh, Sue at my office is such a bitch, she bought the shoes I had my eye on" or "do you know what time Chris came home last night? 5am, that's when. He woke the baby up, the dog was barking and that doddery old bastard next door complained". I wanted to scream at them that a few hours earlier I'd been on dialysis and that these troubles were tiny and insignificant. Obviously I realise now that regardless of what anyone else thinks, our problems are the most pressing subject in the world to us. I'm sure that had I come across someone dealing with a death I'd have been told off for feeling so sorry for myself because at least I was still alive. I also stopped seeing people because I felt I had nothing to offer them. I had no witty stories or tales of a hedonistic weekend to giggle over. All I had were tales of my latest hospital stay. I didn't want people I cared about to see me like that so I stopped returning their calls or emails.

On 15th July 2011, I had my transplant. I won't go into how hard it was for me to accept the kidney from my mum because I'll start crying and I can't afford to replace a tear soaked laptop. It started working immediately and I didn't realise how ill I had actually felt on a daily basis until I noticed how alive I felt. When I think about how fantastic I feel now, even with the extra weight and diabetes, I am amazed I made it out of bed back then. Not everything about my time on dialysis was bad, I learned to bake and I read a zillion books. Now that my horrible kidneys are gone forever I'll never be in pain from them ever again. I've been able to throw away the morphine, codeine and tramadol that I've been taking since I was 19 years old. All the stress was worth it just for that.

Flash forward nine months to today and things are very different. I'm back in paid employment, although in a totally different industry. I work for a company that helps local charities obtain funding, improve their goals, reach their target clients and give them a voice in the area. My doctor said to me "Romany, now that you've got a kidney you have a second chance and you have to use it to do good in the world". So I am. Instead of going back to law and being money orientated, I'm helping people improve the lives of others. Admittedly I'm doing this from behind a desk but every cog in the machine has it's role to play. I'm also reconnecting with the friends I pushed away and I'm a lot more sympathetic when someone wants to have a little whinge about their boyfriend.

If anyone out there is still reading and has made it this far, I would beg you to join the organ donor register. My mum gave me her kidney because we weren't sure how much longer I'd last without one. You don't need your organs when you die. Leaders from all the major religions agree there is no reason not to donate. People have always craved fame or immortality but what better legacy to leave than the gift of life?