Why I decided to donate a kidney.

Why I decided to donate a kidney…..

It was early one Sunday evening during June 2012,  I was watching the early evening news when an item came on regarding a couple of firemen, Phil Jackson and Stuart Vince who had just completed eleven marathons in eleven days and all to raise funds for renal units in two local hospitals in Hampshire and in doing so also raise awareness of organ donation.  Eleven marathons in eleven days, wow what a remarkable endeavour I thought and I’m sure you’ll agree that is some achievement, yet it was made all the more remarkable when the reporter confirmed that Stuart only had one kidney.  He donated the other one to save the life of a friend, Michael, in June 2011. On the news report Michael was there to meet them and looked fit as a fiddle and enjoying a life that he almost certainly wouldn’t have had without Stuart’s amazing generosity.   Also there to meet them was a chap by the name of Nicholas Crace,  this amazing gentleman had been in the news shortly before for becoming the oldest person ever to donate a donor at the age of 83.  Whilst Stuart knew who he was donating his kidney to,  Nicholas didn’t,  his donation was non-directed or altruistic,  in effect he’d given it to a stranger,  I’m sure you’ll agree,  it is an amazing gift.  The whole thing intrigued me, you see before I saw that news report I knew there was living kidney donations but I’d always assumed the donors had to be in some way related to the recipient, either through marriage or family or something like that,  I didn’t know that strangers could give organs too.  So,  I did some research and found that since the 2004 Human Tissue act came into force in 2006 it has become possible for people to donate an organ to a stranger, it’s often known as non-directed altruistic donation and so far in the UK there have been over 93 altruistic donors.   

Until I started research I had little idea about kidney disease and the like, however what I found out doing this research online really astounded me, for example there are around three million people at risk of developing kidney disease in the United Kingdom, people with severe renal failure usually have to spend four or five hours hooked up to a dialysis machine three or four times a week, sometimes more, the quality is life is significantly reduced.  Whilst dialysis helps, it is not a solution, it is not a cure, it is just a temporary measure until an organ becomes available for transplant. There are over 10,000 people in the UK that are in need of a transplant, with are over 7600 people currently on the waiting list.  Shockingly, three people die every single day whilst on the waiting list because there are simply not enough organs available, that’s over a thousand people each year!  What is perhaps more astonishing is that according to recent research, around 96% of us would take a donated organ if we needed it, yet less than a third of us have signed the organ donor register to donate ours, after all when we’re dead we’re not really going to need our organs,  but someone else really does - in fact their very life can depend on it!

I’ve always carried a donor card and I signed the register a long while ago, but I wanted to do more and as I read more and more about living kidney donation I became convinced it was something I wasn’t to do,  or at least explore further.  I know I should perhaps tell you it was a difficult decision to reach, but in all honesty it was,  it was all rather easy.  You see there are so many people suffering greatly and potentially facing death from various kidney problems and I had it literally inside me to help just one of those people, that it almost seemed rude to keep both of mine knowing I could live just as well with one and the other one would let someone else live!  

I’m not saying there hasn’t been a great deal of soul searching and thinking things through because of course there has, you cannot approach something like this without doing so.  First I weighed up all the positive and negative aspects, the long term future and the short term risks.  Of course there are risks and potential dangers that have to be considered,  after all no operation is completely free from risk, organ donations are no exception, there is slight a chance of infections either of the wound or the chest or the urine, but then there are risks with everything in life, from walking down the street to bungee jumping from a bridge or parachuting out of an aeroplane.  Then there is the very small risk that I might die during the operation, this is estimated at about 1 in 3000,  which is the same odds on getting struck by lightening once in a lifetime,  so I can’t say I’m too concerned about that really, after all we all far more likely (1 in 200) to die in a car crash!  

Life with one kidney isn’t anything major to worry about either, no long term side effects, no greater chance of kidney problems later in life than anyone else, in fact according to the research, donors tend to live longer than the average population because they’ve been thoroughly screened and are so healthy. Furthermore many living donors also report feeling much better after the operation than before,  some like Stuart even run eleven marathons in eleven days,  so those concerns were allayed fairly early on.

I’m not even worried about having a nasty scar, most operations these days are done using the latest keyhole surgery techniques which not only leave just little scars, but the recovery time is much quicker.  Nicholas stated he was up and mowing his lawn within a week of his operation and he’s got forty years on me,  so I’m sure I’ll be alright.

On a purely personal level, I am at the age of 43, I’ve never married and I’ve never had children and it really is time I took stock of my life, looked at what I’ve achieved so far and what I have still to do,  one of those things on my life times ‘to do’ list is give something back to society and what better way of giving back than giving someone else the gift of life?