It's my kidney, but its your life - that's the tag line to my experience of trying to become a living kidney donor. It is true to say that living donors save lives, I wanted to be part of such a worthwhile activity. Sadly, giving up a kidney while I'm still breathing isn't going to be an option for me, but I carry a donor card, I've registered online and so, when I depart this ball of water, gas and rock, its open season on my body and its inner bits and bobs. Come and take them, I wont need them, but someone else may very well be in need of them, I hope they get them.
Just to clarify the situation, I had another GFR test, which I had to have done privately and pay for myself, as the NHS wouldn't pay for another one for me, one was enough for them. The second test showed that, whilst my kidneys work, they are, well lets just say, a tad slow. Indeed my GFR rate in the second test was slightly lower than the previous one, which wasn't what I had hoped and proved that living donation wasn't an option. According to the NHS Choices site my GFR rate would indicate I'm on the boarder between stage 2 and stage 3a of CKD - chronic kidney disease, so perhaps its just as well no one else is going to get one of 'em while I'm still kicking.
You might think that all this would have put me off donating organs, but nope, it hasn't, in fact it has made me see just how important it is that we all become organ donors, because you never know when you might need something. So if you are thinking about going dopwn the living kidney donation route, I urge you to do so. It is easy to do and as I've proved all the tests are painless, pleasant and pretty easy to deal with. So why not do it?
