Diary of A Kidney Transplant - Week 2

Before you jump to any conclusions about me, my lifestyle, my habits, eating, my fitness, etc. You can't catch kidney disease through the air, or by touch, or eating or drinking something. Its one of those things that can happen to you out of the blue. Some patients inherit a form of it, most it just happens.

Me. I used to go gym ( I used to be a dancer, long ago). I eat only healthy food, I'm a vegetarian. I've never drank alcohol. I've never smoked. I've never took hard or soft drugs. Ever.

Talking to doctors, they say if  diabetes, high blood pressure or kidney disease is in your family you're more likely to get it. My family was a high blood pressure family, both parents.

To be honest I didn't even know where the kidney was in my own body, let alone what it did. I found out alright. It affects every system in your body in some way, and when they both go down (you can survive easily on one) you definitely know about it.

The kidney is situated towards the lower back,within the abdominal cavity and is responsible for filtering the blood, regulating blood pressure, produces hormones and more importantly via the bladder, excretes urine waste from the body.

Its made up of many nephron cells and the doctors in my case said the new kidney's cells had 'gone to sleep' and need to be woken up one by one.

They also prescribed a revolutionary new process called plasma exchange because there were worries about my body rejecting the new organ. This involved taking my blood, spinning around what seemed and felt like a washing machine for a few hours. This happened many times. Be patient they said.

A Letter to All Friends and Survivors and My Donor

I'm A Survivor - Diary of My Kidney Transplant

Just to put you in the picture: I was a DJ - nothing too special - on the holiday island of Crete, Greece for the summer and everything was going along fine. One day I had a cough. The next day I thought I had flu as my cough had worsened. The next day I couldn't walk up the stairs to my hotel room, so I hired a motor bike to get around. I was referred to a local free doctor (no free NHS in Greece)who took one look at me and without saying anything put me in an ambulance to the local hospital.

 He saved my life. I was drowning in my own waste fluid sitting in my lungs.

The Greeks took care of me and even demanded loads of money for their services but due to the intervention of the consul from the British Embassy a month or six weeks later I was back in Blighty in Guys Hospital London getting the best treatment the NHS (supposedly) could offer. Dialysis.

Fast forward nine years. I organise my local hospital's World Kidney Day on the Thursday, then put on my first ever fashion show on the Sunday, go home and awakened during the night by a doctor telling me he's got a kidney for me at my local hospital. Some week.

I was sceptical (they called me a year before and sent me home) but once I was there I went along with all the tests and x-rays and to be honest I don't remember much about the procedure itself. I woke up tethered to bleeping machines and said, "You've got a new kidney - and its working. Just about".

Hmm I thought. Is this just a false dawn?

Day 2-5 Play Up Pompei

That night I began having series of strange dreams. It was like being invited to look at someone's holiday snaps and home movies. Bright vivid images and even a trailer for a football match. A Portsmouth match with the 'Play up Pompei ' theme.

My kidney's original owner is a Pompei fan, maybe even from Portsmouth itself. The doctors laughed though one said he'd heard a similar story from a heart transplant patient.

The doctors had warned me the donor had died, was a 60year old man, white (I'm black) and wasn't very fit. But his kidney had begun divulging even more information than even the doctors knew.

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