Alexandra Burke's mother says she won't take her daughter's kidney

Alexandra Burke's mother says she won't take her daughter's kidney

Tuesday August 24,2010
By Melissa Bell

I LOVE life and I love being busy but what I long for more than anything else is to return to the good health and energy that I once took for granted.

Yet there is one thing I would never do even if doctors told me it was the only solution to the kidney disease which I have to live with every day. I would never accept a kidney donation from my daughters Sheniece and her younger sister Alexandra, 22, (who won The X Factor in 2008).

They have both said they would do anything to help me but my doctors have explained how risky it can be to carry a child if you only have one kidney.

If there is a problem such as high blood pressure it can be life-threatening if you don’t have a pair of kidneys to get you through it. I couldn’t live with myself if I did anything to jeopardise Alex or Sheniece’s chances of having that joy in their lives.

So even though my own kidneys are now all but destroyed and I have to go to my local renal unit in London three times a week for the dialysis that cleans my blood and keeps me alive, I will never accept my two daughters as potential donors.

It’s amazing how many people around me are willing to be tested to find out whether they are a match. A number of friends and members of the family have put themselves forward including the elder of my two sons David, who is a strapping 23-year-old.

I’m willing to accept his help if he turns out to be a match although it has to be said that knowing my own health relies on such a big sacrifice by someone else is not easy.

I was interested to hear the news last week that many more donor kidneys may soon be available to patients like me.

Generally if a kidney doesn’t come from a live donor who is a good match it comes from someone who has died prematurely. Doctors have always preferred to use kidneys from people who have been declared dead because their brains have stopped functioning but whose hearts are being kept beating on life support machines and whose kidneys have had an uninterrupted blood supply.

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It seems doctors have now discovered that kidneys from donors whose hearts have stopped beating may offer equally successful transplants but it’s always sad to think of the person behind the tragedy who has made that transplant possible.

There are more than 7,000 of us in the UK hoping a kidney will become available so that we can do normal things such as go on holiday away from the dialysis machine or eat plums when they come in season.

I could sit and eat bowlfuls of plums in the summer but they are so high in potassium that my failed kidneys can’t deal with them.

I can’t even risk an extra glass of iced water on a hot day in case my fluid levels rise to dangerous levels.

Only 2,500 kidney transplants are carried out in the UK each year because there are so few donor organs available and around 700 people die each year waiting for a kidney.

It seems amazing to me that in my late 20s I was raising four children on my own and also trying to keep my blossoming singing career going when I got my big break with chart-topping band Soul II Soul in the Nineties.

What I didn’t realise then was that I carried the family susceptibility to kidney disease. When my mum Ivy’s kidneys gave up in her early 60s it never occurred to me that the same thing was going to happen to me.

When my parents brought me to Britain in the late Sixties from their native Jamaica, they were over-protective. Dad encouraged me to eat more than I needed so I was a chubby little girl and then a well-covered teenager and I was perfectly happy with myself.

I had Sheniece, my first baby, when I was 21 and I put on so much weight that I developed gestational diabetes.

In my 30s, as the children were reaching their teens, I was aware that something was wrong but I didn’t want to know what. I am the kind of person who runs away from bad news.

I ran away only a couple of weeks ago when I was having a heart scan, a check-up that has to be done regularly if you have kidney disease because of the damage body salts can do to the heart muscles.

I thought they’d seen something awful. I left the hospital instead of sitting in the waiting room but when I went to my next dialysis session I found it was just an easily treatable infection.

It was Alex who noticed the ulcers on my legs and feet a few years ago and said: “Mum, you have to go to the doctor.” It was then I finally got my diagnosis.

I’m busy with the Roc Da Mic talent spotting charity which Alex is supporting to help us raise money for the Kidney Patient Association and I tell people that if you keep going then your body will carry you.

I end up exhausted at the end of the day but at least I’ve got out there and done something. Life is for living and I try to live the life I have to the full.

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