Transplant couple set for wedding day joyBy Marjory Inglis, health reporter
12 July 2008
AN ANGUS couple who met in the kidney dialysis unit at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital are planning an “unrestricted” wedding.
Susan Mackie (37) and Peter Gillespie (34) will be able to toast each other, enjoy the same food as their guests and go wherever they choose on honeymoon.
Peter had a successful transplant in 2006 and in February this year, just six months away from her big day, Susan got the call “out of the blue” that changed her life and her wedding plans.
Susan was still making thrice weekly trips to Ninewells for dialysis when the couple set the date of their wedding. Being on dialysis meant her life was very restricted, with her liquid intake limited to one litre a day. Her life revolved around monitoring and controlling kidney function in the bid to survive.
But one Sunday morning in February, after languishing on the transplant list for four years, Susan got the call to say a kidney had become available that was a “perfect match” for her.
Tragically, someone had to die to give her back her life and ensure she could be a bride like any other on her special day.
“You have been ill for so long and suddenly somebody gives you this organ that cures you,” said Susan at her Carnoustie home last night. “You just want to get on with the rest of your life.”
The couple are living proof that every cloud has a silver lining because it was kidney failure that brought them together.
Peter was in New York working as a research scientist in a prestigious cancer lab and enjoying life in the Big Apple when he was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2004.
“It forced me to come back home when I didn’t plan to,” said Peter. “But it has worked out well in the end because I met Susan.”
He got a job in the Cancer Research UK laboratory at Ninewells where he did his post graduate degree work and started regular dialysis in the renal unit there. He met Susan and the couple had their first date on December 3, 2005. The following April he had a live donor transplant, from his mother Barbara.
After initial problems and a protracted spell in hospital after the transplant, Peter turned the corner and proposed to Susan. The couple got engaged in December 2006.
“I always hoped I would have a kidney by the time I got married, but I couldn’t plan the date around that,” said Susan.
“I had been on the transplant list for four years and to be honest you forget about it and aren’t hanging on waiting for the phone call every day.”
But when the call did come she was off to Edinburgh, where the operation took place and was an immediate success.
“I was up having a shower the next day,” said Susan, who works in the finance department of Angus Council at Forfar.
She now has the energy and three nights a week more time to plan the wedding. And, more than anything, she’s looking forward to a glass of champagne on her big day.
“We can now join in the toast and eat a normal meal and be able to go away on honeymoon—all things we couldn’t do before,” said Susan.
“When you get a transplant you are no longer on a restricted diet or fluid restrictions. You can drink alcohol and you can go away on holidays wherever you like and not be restricted to places where you can get dialysis.”
Grateful for the gift of a normal life, Peter and Susan won’t be forgetting those who are not so lucky on their wedding day and are still waiting for a transplant.
“We are putting a box of donor cards on the bar at our wedding,” said Susan. “We thought if we put it on the bar people will have had a few drinks and be ready to sign them!”
Since April 1 this year 238 people in the UK have donated organs and 703 people have received organs. But 7772 people are still waiting for an organ transplant.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2008/07/12/newsstory11641906t0.asp
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