Kidney recipient gets second life

[okarol]

Kidney recipient gets second life

18/06/2007

By DI THOMAS
The Border Morning Mail

BRENDAN Arundel says he feels like he’s won the lottery.

After an eight-year wait, the Albury upholsterer received his second donor kidney six weeks ago and says he’s now feeling well enough to think about returning to light work next week.

“I’m feeling so well I have to tell myself to slow it down a little,” he said.

The phone call which gave Mr Arundel the good news that a donor kidney was available was as much a surprise to his doctors as it was to him.

He carries 98 per cent antibodies in his blood, meaning that out of 100 donor kidneys which might be available, his body would be likely to reject 98.

“Every one of the doctors I spoke with couldn’t believe it. “It was the best possible match I could ask for,”

Mr Arundel, 36, has suffered kidney disease since birth.

One of his kidneys was removed when he was four and the second deteriorated rapidly.

He waited for two years on the donor list, undergoing peritoneum dialysis regularly until he received his first donor kidney in June 1990, when aged 19.

But a serious knock he received while at work several years later meant that his donor kidney began to fail more than eight years ago.

The donor kidney gave him so much pain it was removed and Mr Arundel began undergoing peritoneum dialysis at home for the next four years before he became too sick.

For the past four years he had dialysis at the Wodonga renal unit three times a week.

“The call was just luck. I answered the mobile and someone said ‘it’s Royal Melbourne Hospital and we have a kidney for you’,” he said.

“I said ‘yeah, right’.”

Mr Arundel was in hospital in Melbourne straight away and undergoing a plasma exchange before the surgery took place.

An initial biopsy showed no rejection of the new kidney and by the fifth biopsy he had received the all clear.

For the next three months he will travel to Melbourne for doctor’s appointments although he also sees Border specialist Russell Auwardt weekly.

“I’m not free yet. I’ll have to see the doctors every three months and then every six months but after doing dialysis for so long I feel relief,” he said.

http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/bm/local/829458.html