After a lot of waiting and a fair amount of stress, I am delighted to tell you that I will be starting my assessment as a donor for Jo on December 11!
The doctors are completely satisfied that my health issues have not, and will not have in the future, any bearing on my kidney function whatsoever.
The relief is huge. Firstly because this gives me, my husband, my children, family and friends less fear about the procedure and any potential dangers to me. It's something which has been a worry for everyone - especially Jo.
Secondly, it's nice to finally have a definitive diagnosis and know that, although I have aches and pains, that's it. There is no more confusion about what I have and that seems to have had a positive impact on all of us.
Most of all, this means that I am a step further forward to helping my lovely sister.
I found out the good news yesterday and about twenty minutes before I was due to leave to go to Jo's son, Bailey's, 11th birthday party.
As Bailey was celebrating in style with a loud disco, I thought that it would be nice to write a letter to Jo and give it to her at the party so that she could sit and digest the information without me yelling to her over the sounds of 'Gangnam Style' whilst being dived on by dozens of sugar rushing children.
Here's what I wrote to her:
21 November 2012
My Darling Sister, Jo,
I am giving you this letter as it is going to be too noisy at Bailey’s birthday party to be able to tell you this properly.
Perhaps you will read it as soon as I hand it to you. Perhaps you will wait until you get home.
Firstly, I want to tell you how very proud I am of what a strong, wonderful and determined woman you are. I have always been proud to call you my sister but, during these last few months, you have astonished me with your strength, will and positive spirit. You are amazing.
I want you to know that I will always be here for you and that I will fight your corner whenever your strength is running low. I love you.
I have just spoken to Kay Hamilton, the Transplant Co-ordinator at Southmead, and she has told me that I can now be assessed as your donor.
I have an appointment to see her on December 11th.
Yippeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Love you, love you, love you!
Judexxxxxx
I also drew some daft pictures on the bottom of the letter but you don't need to see those!
Jo cried when she read it. I could literally see hope filling her eyes and her heart.
She has had an incredibly tough time recently and it is getting harder and harder to watch her struggling. We are trying not to get our hopes up too high but it feels so good to have a little more hope than we did last week.
Her fistula operation was a lot harder than we thought it'd be. The surgery involved opening her upper left arm and pulling deep veins etc to the surface to form the fistula.
As she already has the line in her neck on the right hand side, she has been unable to lay on either side so has not slept comfortably for almost two months. Laying on her back is painful due to her bone grafts so she's really been suffering.
The first attempt at using her fistula resulted in a vessel bursting and a huge bleed which left Jo in a lot of pain and with a lot of extra bruising. This wasn't an easy thing to deal with as, and every dialysis patient will tell you, a working fistula is vital and Jo was worried that her operation would have been for nothing.
Happily, this Tuesday, Jo had her first dialysis through her fistula and it went well.
Apparently, dialysis is more effective via a fistula so hopefully she will feel much better once she is using this regularly.
After a few successful dialysis sessions with it, the horrible neck line will be removed. She is really looking forward to this.
Jo's body's ability to remove excess fluid is slowing down quite quickly now. This means that, as well as getting her blood cleaned by the dialysis machine every other day, she also has to have fluid removed too. Sometimes it's up to about 3 kg of fluid which makes her blood pressure drop and she feels very poorly.
She has also started on some new medication to regulate her parathyroid glands. This is because of a malfunction in the glands which has arisen as a result of her kidney failure.
It's really hard to understand and impossible for me to explain so you might wish to read about it here.
Dialysis has brought her vibrancy back. It's an incredible invention and it's hard to comprehend that the machine is keeping her alive.
That is a huge and frightening statement and it's weird because Jo is walking around, looks good and is just, well, herself.
Jo's weight had dropped dramatically before she started dialysis. When the kidneys stop working, all of the toxins which would normally pass out of the body remain in the blood stream. This made her feel extremely sick pretty much all of the time.
This link provides information on just how serious kidney disease is.
A new kidney would mean that she would feel 100% better and would no longer have to rely on a machine to keep her living. Her life and the life of her family would become normal and unrestricted by the confines of living with such a life threatening condition.
I am glad that there have been some positive stories relating to living kidney donors recently.
This story was on BBC1 this morning and involves a Richard Bright patient: Have a look here. It's lovely and fills me with hope that Jo will be able to feel well again soon.
As always, I ask you to think about donating a kidney by joining the registry and giving hope to people who need this precious gift more than you will ever know.
Please, please help us to raise awareness of kidney failure and the devastating effect it has on the loves of sufferers and their loved ones.
I'll keep you posted on my assessment. Please keep hoping and thank you again for your continued support.
Jude x
