transplant week 2011

Carla Maclean

Meet Carla and Pete. Pete donated a kidney to Carla and helped to save her life.

My wife’s kidney’s don’t work.

Her transplanted kidney failed when we met.

She had started dialysis, for the second time in her life, by the time we had started our relationship. It kind of surprised me how matter of fact she was about it. I’m not sure how I’d cope, but I’m pretty sure I’d rail against fortune, for a while at least. Maybe she did when her kidneys first failed, around 19. Or when she first started dialysis. Or each time the phone rang and it wasn’t the transplant team!

Dialysis really does suck. To watch. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to go through. Carla was on peritoneal dialysis - to get the toxins out, they put tubes in, pump fluid into your belly and suck it out.

Scientifically, it’s clever, in practice it can be painful, a bit gross and really long, 10 hours of lying there hooked into a machine, not able to sleep through, or much else. And it doesn’t even make you feel good.

Sometimes dialysis doesn’t work. After 4 years of decreasingly successful treatment my wife had a stroke, most likely due to high blood pressure. She was in intensive care for 2 weeks. For most of that time she wasn’t there, as if she was having a conversation with someone over my shoulder. The chemicals in her brain were different, not in balance, the medical staff simply couldn’t say if she’d return.

Slowly, for no discernible reason, Carla did return. The chemicals sorted themselves out, and the person that I fell in love with and married returned.The transplant that followed sixth months later, made possible by the paired exchange programme is almost an afterthought in my mind. The procedure was hugely successful for Carla, for the other recipients and donors, a walk in the park for me.

I’m surprised by the shortage of people willing donate their organs after death. I just don’t get it. The amount of suffering can be reduced so much by such this simple gesture. If you read this, and aren’t on the register, visit a dialysis ward. Talk to the patients about all the things they used to do before and how their life is now. Then join the register.

What are you waiting for, sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register today.

You can read the first part of Carla and Pete's story here.