Organ donation

Once approval is granted, then things start to move quite quickly because you’ve been approved, you’re healthy and there are recipients. There are people who need your kidneys, so things moved quite quickly after. Though I did have one major glitch in that I was actually admitted to hospital to have the operation done the next morning, and that very evening the surgeon came to see me and said, “Well I’m very sorry but the person who has been allocated your kidney has become very ill and we don’t think they’re going to be fit enough. So we can’t do the operation now.”

So I went home and that was a little bit disappointing and inconvenient obviously because I’d made all the arrangements.

But, in fact, in retrospect, it wasn’t that much of a problem because it took another six to eight weeks I think before the next recipient was lined up. And I went into hospital and everything went straight forwardly on the second occasion.
 

Once the results came through, then within a couple of days they put me on the national database, to locate a recipient.

This was something that I didn’t anticipate at all in that the first recipient, they found a match within a couple of days. I had to go and give blood for them to do cross matching. Although we had to wait something like three weeks because the recipient’s hospital, apparently for whatever reason, wouldn’t be able to do the cross matching until then. And it didn’t match. And the recipient wasn’t compatible at all.

That knocked me for six. I just thought they’d find a recipient and that would be it. I didn’t know that there was still a possibility that they wouldn’t. And that really, really upset me quite considerably. 

Yes. Take your time, it’s okay

Anyway, they then went through the process again and found a second recipient. But, again, they weren’t a match. It was getting really quite stressful. I thought well what’s going wrong. I thought once I’d passed and been accepted, everything would just be so plain sailing. But in fact it was the end part that caused me the most stress of all.

And then the third recipient was found and both the co-ordinator [specialist nurse] and myself were saying, “Third time lucky, hopefully.” And it was. And that was just such a relief that the third person was a match. So then it was arranging the date for the operation. And my particular hospital only did pre-arranged operations on a certain day each week. So they gave me a choice. And I picked a couple that would have suited me. They then, the recipient and their hospital fit’s in around us, and a date was actually fixed.
 

They gave me quite a lot of information. They gave me a booklet which I’ve still got about organ donation. It pretty much covers most of the actual surgery and just the practicalities, what to expect and various things. And again I got a DVD which featured basically people doing this interview and explaining, like the recipients and the donors. I think one or two various other people that are connected, like the wife of someone or something like that.

Yeah. Did you watch that?

Oh yeah, of course. Yes. I personally, I said to the surgeon that I want to see the actual surgery being done. But I don’t, they haven’t got one of them so far. But that was more the kind of the emotional aspects and…

And do you feel you had all the information in the DVD and the booklet?

Like I said, the actual surgery procedure, no, I like quite a lot of things like that, like more as a sort of a reality kind of. But, yeah, it was interesting, it was quite, you know. Everyone looked quite happy to be there, so I don’t think they would have done it otherwise. But it was quite encouraging. So basically that was confined to mainly the recipients and donors from their point of view rather than anyone else like the NHS staff or whatever.
 

The night before they check you out in the usual way, your temperature and all that sort of thing. And the next morning you’re not allowed to eat anything as usual. And you’re wheeled down and then they put you under, which is quite nice drifting off.

And when you come round, obviously you feel a bit disorientated. You look round and think “Where on earth am I?” But quite soon you realise where you are, and then you’re wheeled up to the ward. And the nurses usually rally round and are very nice.

And then not long after getting back to the ward, my husband was able to come and see me and I felt fine.  I don’t think I could eat that day. I’m sure I wasn’t allowed to eat that day.
And they give you pain relief that you can administer yourself. You press a little button.  And they’re very good about that, in the sense that they don’t make you feel that you have to be almost screaming with pain or anything before…In fact they encourage you not to, so I think I used about the average amount. I don’t think I used particularly huge amounts or particularly low amounts. But I did press it and I wasn’t in much, I cannot say I had much pain.

I think that evening when my daughter, one of my daughters came with my husband, I must have perhaps had slightly more morphine than perhaps I should have done because apparently I was a bit incoherent. And, as they left, my daughter said, “I think we’ve got to get her off the morphine, she’s talking gibberish.” But I think that was probably just the second day. And then by the next day I was off the morphine I think in a couple of days.

And it is difficult getting out of bed the first time and going to the toilet and all that. But it’s really not very uncomfortable and the nurses were very kind.
 

I woke up and just, as I say, there was some pain immediately afterwards but they dealt with that quite quickly. So I then felt pretty drowsy and then, later that evening, I was on the ward.

I had the surgeon come round, told me everything had gone smoothly. I had a device to control the amount of pain relief I received, which worked pretty well. It was a morphine drip that you could control to some degree. And that stayed on and, as I say, apart from the slightly disturbed night as a result of a noisy patient, and I think obviously there was a certain amount of discomfort as I said. But that lasted, so the next day wasn’t great.

But I had visitors, family came to see me and that all went really quite smoothly. That was on, the operation was actually early on a Friday morning and on Saturday, as I say, I had people visiting.

And on Sunday I actually began to feel significantly better. And got out to the bathroom and had various tubes removed. And on Sunday evening I went home. My wife collected me and wheeled me down the long hospital corridors in a wheelchair, in which I felt slightly strange. But, no, it wasn’t that difficult and in fact she escorted me and I went home by train in fact. It was quite easy to do.

So in total you were in hospital for a couple of days were you?

Yes. I went in on the Thursday evening for the operation on the Friday morning and was out on the Sunday evening.
 

I had really bad stomach pains, and they had to, the day after they came round, gave like, actually because I was vomiting and stuff, they stuck a tube down my… which I really didn’t like. But they had to pump the stuff out of my stomach, and all the gas and things like that. That was nasty. That was really horrible, man.

So that didn’t really, I thought I was going to be in for a few days but not quite that long. So, I was in

So you were actually in for about six days did you say?

Yeah, at least. About seven. I went in on a Wednesday and I came out on, I was in there for a week, and then I came out on the Saturday. So, I was in there for two weekends, really, more or less. So, yeah, that was more like about 9 days actually I think.

Yeah. And you were expecting to be in there shorter?

Yeah.

Yeah. But, what happened to you?

Basically, I got pleuritic chest pain apparently and a rigid abdomen, which is, I don’t know, basically it’s where you can’t really keep anything down hardly. You just keep vomiting. I did try some food but it just wasn’t really, it was just coming back up again.

And so they took me down the next day for more x-rays and things like that. So they just said, “Right, just drink water for a couple of days and then try really soft food.” And yeah I started recovering really. 
 

I’m sensitive to morphine and I didn’t know that. I haven’t been in a situation where I’ve had any. But obviously my respiration rate fell and because I’m an asthmatic, luckily you know. As you say you know, God’s helping you what have you. There was a lady from the vascular unit, cardiovascular, and she’s probably seen cases that are like this before. And she said to the doctor, “I think this girl’s having some adverse reaction to the morphine.”

And then he, initially it carried on and I was coming in and out of consciousness, falling asleep. And I remember this lady is poking me, and I’m just like, “Leave me alone, I want to sleep.”

But then obviously they took me off the morphine and they put me on Oxycodone and Hydrocodone, which isn’t as rough as a drug and it’s less strong. And then obviously I managed with that and that was fine. But when this was all happening, this lady [another patient] came who’s got her own problems, and she came and she sat by me and she held my hand.

That, for me, was how nice she was, and I thought well I can’t forget that, because okay I’m helping my Dad but yet somebody’s come that I’ve never met before. I’ve only met you the night before for about four hours, and there we were, just had a little chat or whatever.

And this lady has been in and out of hospital. She’s taking lots of medicines. She was in a lot of pain the night before, and I think she had a really rough night, otherwise she was going to go home that Thursday, was it the Thursday? So she was really helpful, just to come and help.
 

I went and waited in the garden. It was a lovely day and I’m so pleased because I met a man there and his wife. The man was an in-patient. He was waiting for a kidney and pancreas transplant. He really did look ill. The colour of his skin was white. His lips were almost the same colour. He was as thin as a rake. He was happy though. You know, this is what has surprised me about everybody who is ill. They just keep smiling. I think I’d be, I don’t know.

But I never met one person who was really full of self-pity or anything. They just knew they had to get on with it and made the best of it. And he was telling me and his wife was telling me about himself. And then he said to me, “Oh why are you here? Have you had a transplant?” So I said, “No, I’ve donated.”

And I suppose the natural thing was for them to say, “Oh, who to?” And I said, “I don’t know, whoever’s next on the list.” And this has just stuck with me ever since because they were so grateful to me. I hadn’t given him my kidney, it wasn’t like most people’s reactions, “Oh well done, what a nice thing to do.” He was in tears, we were all in tears. And he was just so grateful for me for getting someone off dialysis, even if it wasn’t him.

And then he was doubled over in pain quite often. I presume it was the abdomen he was having the dialysis, and that was obviously causing great problems and pain. And it just really opened my eyes as to how much it meant to people to have that organ donation. And at that point I was just so pleased that I went through with it, and that nothing stopped me and that I was able to do it. Because there’d be one person like him, not like him anymore but living a normal life, back to their family. And it was, even now, I think about him.