It feels strange to think that I began dialysis only six months ago yesterday. Life before dialysis seems much like a dream now, a vague and distant memory that is barely real. Dialysis is so much part of my weekly routine that I can hardly recall what it was like not receiving treatment. Which brings me to the topic of today’s blog: the progress I’m making towards finding a kidney donor.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the beginning of my quest to find a donor. In South Africa, where I live, it seems the most common way of finding a donor is to reach out to the community and appeal to the people you know, starting with your family and friends. While we do have a list of people hoping to receive a kidney from a deceased donor, I’ve been told that the wait can be up to 10 years.
My first step was to start a Facebook group called Matching Hope – A Kidney for Lois. Rather than sending an invitation to my friends and colleagues to ask them to join the group, I elected to share a post from the group onto my personal Facebook profile and my business page, and to share the link on this blog.
I posted an appeal to the group, asking if anyone might be willing to consider donating me a kidney if they were a match.
What few people seem to know is that it’s completely possible to live a full and productive life with only one kidney, for both the donor and the recipient. Provided you are relatively healthy and are a tissue match, you can be a kidney donor for someone like me whose life will be transformed by being the recipient of such a gift.
Amazingly, since sending out my appeal for a donor, no fewer than eleven people have come forward and offered to test if they are a possible match. The response has been both heartwarming and humbling as I realized what truly wonderful people I have in my life.
The very first person who put their hand up and said they would be willing to gift me a kidney is a friend who I’ve known since university.
Our first test was to confirm that our blood groups were compatible. I am an O+ blood group, which means I can only receive a kidney from someone who is either blood group O+ or O-. And it turned out that our blood groups were compatible.
Our next step was to discover if we are a good crossmatch. What I understand this to mean is that they needed to discover if our specific blood samples would be compatible together, or if they would fight each other.
We underwent the necessary blood tests and, after almost three weeks, we received confirmation that we are a tissue match. For me, this was a huge step forward, and I began to feel the first sense of hope that a transplant may be a reality.
I wish I could tell you that the next step is to schedule a date for the transplant to take place, but we still have a long way to go before I can do that. Both my potential donor and I need to go through an exhaustive battery of tests to make sure there are no underlying conditions that might derail the process or increase the risks of the transplant not working. I completely support the process, as I want both myself and my donor to be in the best possible condition for this to work. But the tests will take time to arrange and implement.
For now, we’re waiting on my medical aid to approve the tests. I am super-impressed that my medical aid will cover the costs of the tests and the subsequent transplant operations if we are found to be a match, which is a massive relief to me.
And that’s where we’re currently at, waiting for the go-ahead to start running the tests. I’ll keep you updated as we continue on this journey, because a journey it certainly is.
For now, we are excited to have reached this stage and are keeping positive that all will work out in the end.
