Sunday, September 20, 2009

From one article to another...

Two years exactly today the following article was published in my local newspaper.

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At the time I had been waiting for a kidney for four years and was feeling pretty rubbish most of the time.

I'm so happy to say that this week an entirely different article came out in Look magazine
about me and my wonderful friend Oli.

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Two years ago I could have never had dreamed that I would be so lucky to receive a kidney from a friend. Since my family had not matched I'd given up hope getting a living donor kidney and instead was focusing all my hopes on the UK Transplant list. Since I have lots of antibodies currently running around in my system this was looking unlikely. I can honestly say a day never goes by where I don't thank my lucky stars that I am in the position I am in now and I am no longer tied to a dialysis machine or feeling utterly crap.

The one thing that makes me sad about the 1st article is that the headline is truer than ever right now, nothing has changed. Just because I am doing well now doesn't mean that I can forget about all the others waiting out there because not enough people have considered organ donation after they've gone or spoken to their family about it. Frank Deasy's story touched the nation when it was released in the national newspapers last weekend and over 10,000 more people signed up, which is incredible. Sadly a transplant came too late for Frank and his body wasn't strong enough to cope with it. He died on the operating table a few days after his article was published.

This week, 20 year old Jessica Wales, who I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago has been admitted to hospital in a bad way. She is currently on a NIV (delivery of ventilator support) 24 hours a day and her time is seriously running out. She's been waiting for a double lung transplant for four years now and has had 7 calls, all of which tragically fell through for one reason or another. Please spread the word about organ donation or talk to your family about it this weekend - Jess doesn't deserve to die. Sign up here.