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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