Former firefighter recovers after kidney transplant

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Former firefighter recovers after kidney transplant
 
 
BY CARYS MILLS, OTTAWA CITIZEN JANUARY 23, 2014
 
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Former firefighter recovers after kidney transplant
 
After a national online search for a donor, dialysis patient and former volunteer firefighter Craig Dunbar finally got a new kidney one week ago. The donor is the wife of his former fire chief.
Photograph by: Chris Mikula , Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — One week after Craig Dunbar’s kidney transplant he said he’s feeling “like a million bucks.“

The former volunteer firefighter got his new kidney Jan. 16 from a living donor, the wife of his old chief.

“Both surgeries went beautifully,“ Dunbar said Thursday from his home in Carp.

He was released Tuesday from The Ottawa Hospital, just a few days after his donor went home to Napanee on Sunday.

Before she came forward, Dunbar, 41, heard from people across North America after his family took his search online. While he searched for a kidney, after going into acute renal failure, he was dependent on dialysis.

“Just to have a working kidney now and not have the effects on my body of being dialysis, my mind and thinking is so clear,“ Dunbar said. “I have so much more energy now. I want to run a marathon tomorrow, but of course you can’t after major surgery.“

A marathon isn’t actually what Dunbar has in mind, he said, although he does have some goals.

First, being able to put on his shoes without his abdominal muscles being painfully sore. Next, he said, he wants to walk a 5K and do a gentle jog later in the year.

A softball injury in 2007, and the anti-inflammatories given as a result, triggered Dunbar’s underlying kidney disease.

One sign of how well Dunbar is doing is his blood work. Before surgery, he said, a toxin that’s indicative of kidney function was more than 10 times the normal level. A day after surgery, his level had fallen to half that, and it continues to fall toward a normal range, he said.

Despite all the preparations before surgery to make sure the new kidney would work, Dunbar said, he and his donor weren’t worried about rejection or other issues.

“We each thought it was odd that neither of us was nervous,” he said. “I was just calmly confident it was going to work.“

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