Day -1: Everything Changes

Forward: I am attempting to record my personal experience of kidney transplant in these pages. Memories fade but I am hoping that this will serve as a record of the events as they unfolded for me. It’s been a surreal couple of weeks and my life has changed forever as a result.

Day -1

At 6:15 am on Sunday morning on the 26th July 2020 my life changed forever. We awoke to the sound of the downstairs telephone ringing. I jumped to my feet and staggered downstairs to have missed a call from an unknown mobile number. Who could be calling at this time? A few seconds later the phone rang again. The voice at the other end introduced herself as a doctor at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and she had an offer of a new kidney for me. Everything stopped and my world began to spin. I called up to Kerry… “They have a kidney for me!!!” I immediately called my parents and my mother swore uncharacteristically. After years of illness the stars had aligned and it was happening.

My bag had been prepared for months. A few toiletries, pajamas’s, charging cables and the like. I chucked in a few socks and pants, t-shirts, joggers along with my kindle, a music player and some earplugs. After a coffee and a hurried round of toast we paused for a family hug. James was up and about and I knew it would be a little while before I saw him again. Then me and Mrs M hit the eerily quiet M6 and headed for Birmingham an hour away. We had been directed to a back door at the hospital, avoiding the main entrance. I was not Covid19 cleared and needed to be isolated. I found the ambulance staff entrance and called the designated number. Once escorted inside I would not emerge for almost a fortnight.

It took about 6, strange hours for my result to come back, at which time I was escorted to Ward 726 on the 7th floor of the hospital and installed in, what I now know to be, a broom cupboard: a windowless side-room with 2 beds, 2 dialysis machines and a pile of ‘clobber’. The ward was full and they struggled to fit me in. I was visited by Maria who admitted me and was soon visited by surgeons, anesthetists and consultants. I was asked to be nil-by-mouth but told that the kidney was not yet in Birmingham. As is customary with these things I was told nothing about the donor, other than that it was an excellent match for me and they were of a comparative age. My good fortune was tinged with sadness – there was a terrible tragedy for another family on the other side of this finely balanced equation.

By 5pm is was apparent that the procedure would not be conducted on Sunday. The kidney was not yet here and I could therefore eat and drink until midnight. I set about cramming my face with snacks from the ward snacks cupboard. At 11pm the doctors decided to give me two hours dialysis to give me a good baseline for transplant. At 1am I settled back and put in my earplugs. I was anxious and excited, terrified and strangely calm… and I slept a solidly on the bed that would become mine for the next fortnight. I was awoken at 6am by the surgeon who had come into work an hour and a half early to check the new kidney. He was excited – it was a good one! He was armed with paperwork which I was to sign accepting that there was a possibility that I may, in-fact, die. There was no going back, Day 0 was about to begin.