Friends united with matching donor kidneys

[okarol]

July 21, 2007

Friends united with matching donor kidneys

David Rose
From The Times

LONDON -- Two friends who had waited years for kidney transplants have received organs from the same donor.

Rob Fowler, 52, and Heather Jones, 46, met in hospital after both suffered kidney failure and became friends as they underwent daily dialysis.

The odds of two friends receiving organs from the same donor were “incalculable”, experts said. But when they were notified on the same day that a donor had come up they were surprised to run into each other at hospital.

Ms Jones, a mother of one, said yesterday: “When I got to the hospital and saw Rob. I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ We just looked at each other and we were both thinking that only one of us was going to get the kidney as it’s so difficult to find a match. The way it had worked out is brilliant. We have really pulled each other through and call each other brother and sister now.

“Before the transplant my life was a nightmare and now I feel wonderful.”

Ms Jones had diabetes diagnosed in her twenties and had numerous operations, including having a foot amputated, before her kidney collapsed in 2004.

She got the fateful phone call at 5am on June 9 asking her to get to Southmead Hospital in Bristol immediately for a kidney transplant.

But as Ms Jones made the one-hour journey from her home in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, she had no idea that Mr Fowler, of nearby Gloucester, had got the same call. Mr Fowler, a grandfather, had waited almost ten years for a donor and had already suffered the rejection of one transplanted kidney.

It was not until after the operation that a nurse revealed that a young man who had died in an accident had left both his kidneys.

Ms Jones said yesterday: “Rob went straight into surgery but I had to wait another 12 hours. I just kept thinking he would get the kidney and any moment I would be told to go home.

“I had been so ill I could hardly get out of bed, so I was desperate for the transplant. It was only when I woke up in a ward – in the next-door bed to Rob – that we realised.”

Mr Fowler said that the pair have become firm friends after the kidney donor transformed their lives.He said: “We went through everything together. We have been given a new lease of life. I still have an enlarged heart, but the difference this has made to my life is amazing.”

Mr Fowler, who is now back at work as a part-time gardener, added: “I have written to the donor’s family and it was an very emotional thing to do. They have suffered but what that person did was very important. They have given me a life and my family a life too. You cannot put a price on that.”

Dominic Moody, a spokesman for UK Transplant, the NHS organisation that matches and allocates donated organs, said: “This story demonstrates how the kindness of just one organ donor can bring new hope to several patients, and their families.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2112864.ece