A Year On

My brother and I celebrated our first anniversary last week. Something we affectionately now call our "Kidneyversary". We've decided that every year on the 12th February we will get together and celebrate.

When I tell people that I donated a kidney to my brother, they usually have at least two questions. The first being, "has your life changed much?" The second, "So, your brother is OK now?"

To the first I can answer easily, No it hasn't. Not one bit, other than I get drunk quicker, not a lot else has changed. My scars have healed beautifully, in fact you can barely see them at all now. Having one kidney will only become a problem or a concern, if I choose to start a family or find myself needing a new kidney.

The second answer is a little more complex. Giving my brother a kidney, is not like being given a pill for a headache. It didn't cure him. The transplant is a treatment not a cure. My brother will still have to take tablets for the rest of his life. Some of these tablets are immunosuppressants, which help to prevent his body from rejecting the kidney. There is always the chance that he will reject the kidney at some point, a year after, 5 years, 10 years after. The type of transplant we opted for, an ABO incompatible, is the riskiest in terms of rejection statistics.

Taking the immunosuppressant drugs increases his risk for serious infections and diseases such as, skin cancer  and lymphoma. He also has a greater risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cataracts, and inflammation of the liver (cirrhosis) by taking these medicines.

At the moment his greatest struggle is his weight, before his kidney disease diagnosis he had an underactive thyroid or hypothyroidism, which causes weight gain. Having hypothryroidism, slows your metabolism thus making it difficult to lose weight. Combine this with the course of steroids he has to take as part of his post transplant medicine regime and the problem is magnified.

Being overweight is not good for your kidneys. It raises your blood pressure which puts more stress on your other organs, especially your kidneys. It's their job to clean your blood, the faster the blood pumps, the harder they have to work and the quicker you loose function due to the reduction in their ability to operate efficiently.

The weight loss is slow for my brother but he is working hard at it, exercising regularly and seeing a nutritionist to help develop a plan.

As for me I was lucky, the weight just dropped of me after the transplant. I went from 76kg pre transplant and I now weigh 67kg. I haven't weighed that much since I was 18!!! So not only did I get to do a great thing for my brother, i got to lose some weight too!! My brother and I joke that I gave him my fat kidney!

I will have my follow up appointment soon, I've no date for it yet, but they follow up with you every year, so I'm expecting a letter. I'll let you know how it goes.