Lying on the operating table waiting for the anaesthetist to put me to sleep, I held my mum’s hand and heard her ask the surgeons to look after me.
By then, I wasn’t really living; I was just surviving. I’d once been sporty, bubbly and outgoing, but I’d been on dialysis for kidney failure for nine years – ever since my 10th birthday.
A transplant from my dad when I was 11 had failed almost immediately, leaving me in hospital for three months. I’d suffered endless serious infections and was sleeping for hours every day, exhausted from my gruelling dialysis sessions.
So much had gone wrong that when I’d been told there was a kidney for me from a living donor who was a “perfect match” – giving it a strong chance of working well – I’d assumed something would stop the surgery from going ahead. As they placed the mask over my mouth, it finally hit me: the thing I’d never allowed myself to believe in was actually going to happen, and I started to cry.
I was a different person from the second I woke up. After every operation I’d had before, I’d been in pain. I was always emotional and didn’t want to be touched. But this time it was completely different.
When they wheeled me on to the ward, my mum burst into tears. She was so used to seeing me unwell and upset after surgery, and instead I was sitting up waving and smiling. I remember the first time I looked in the mirror: I’d never thought I looked ill until I saw myself looking well. I was just instantly better.
A week later, I wrote a letter to Christian, the 27-year-old man who’d given me his kidney. I started it with the definition of a hero, because I wanted him to know he was my hero. That he’d saved my life, and he’d given me a life.
I’d been warned that not all kidney donors want contact from the recipient, which is handled by the hospital. But Christian wrote back, and we carried on exchanging letters, then emails, and eventually he came up to Liverpool to meet me and all my family.
That day was surreal. I can’t actually remember what we first said to each other, because when I opened the door my mum burst past me, crying her eyes out, and just grabbed him. Then she dragged him into the living room where the rest of the family were – not just my parents, but my sisters, my nan and grandad, even my auntie. There were so many people who wanted to embrace him.
It’s hard for me to put into words what Christian’s donation means to me. When I was on dialysis, I had no hopes for the future, no plans. You can’t really plan anything when you don’t know how long you’re going to be here.
University was never an option. I’d never dreamed about a wedding day, or having children, or thought about what my future home would be like. I’d wanted to be a police officer, but at college the course I hoped to take wouldn’t fit around my dialysis. It’s only because of having this kidney that I know what life and living is – and I’ve got such a lust for living now that I can’t slow down.
Straight after the transplant I decided I would go back to college and get my grades up and go to uni, and in the autumn of that year I went to Chester to study criminal justice. It felt amazing: for the first time I felt I could do anything I put my mind to. And it just felt great to be normal, and do the things that everyone else took for granted.
I fell in love with travel, which I’d never been able to do before – we’d only been on one family holiday while I was on dialysis. I decided that having been strapped to a machine for nine years, I didn’t want to tie myself to a desk for the next 10. I now work as a cabin crew member for British Airways.
Three years ago my partner Kevin and I bought a house, and a year later we got married. We hope to have a family together. I even took part in a beauty pageant, which was so much fun. My attitude is that if something comes my way, I’m going to do it. Christian and I are still in touch, and hope to meet up again one day.
I think donating an organ to a stranger is the most selfless thing you can do. I assumed my donor would have a connection to kidney disease, perhaps would have lost a loved one who was waiting for a transplant. But Christian was a regular blood donor who saw a leaflet about kidney donation when he was there one day, and just thought: “Why would I not do that for someone?”
To me, that’s the biggest thing about my story. It isn’t what I went through as a kid, or that it took so long for me to get a transplant. It’s that there’s this amazing man walking this planet who saved my life, when he didn’t even know me.
