Yesterday it was ten years since I had my kidney transplant, which has given us as a family a cause to be extra grateful, celebrate and eat cake.  At this time of year I am especially beholden to the family who donated their loved one’s kidney, enabling my health and quality of life to improve dramatically.  

In the spring Max and Keira’s Law will change organ donation in England to an ‘opt out’ system, which means that all adults in England will be considered to have agreed to be an organ donor when they die unless they have recorded a decision not to donate. The NHS are asking everyone to: record their organ donation decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register, and tell their family and friends what they have decided.  Families will still have the final decision. 

As of 10th January this year there are: 6167 people waiting for a transplant, and every day someone dies waiting for a transplant.  

On my tenth birthday I wrote a poem in the form of William Blake’s The Tyger, so yesterday it seemed fitting to write one for my kidney.   My transplanted kidney came from someone older than my mother.  How weird to think that something inside me has been on this earth longer than my mother has!

My Transplant

Kidney Kidney, turning ten,
In the bodies of young men;
What ultimate gift from grief,
Could dying restore hope’s belief?

What memories are secured
Within your double lives endured?
What joys? What sorrows? And what pains?
As you beat life’s path – again.

Kidney Kidney, turning ten,
In the bodies of young men;
What ultimate gift from grief,
In dying restored hope’s belief?