Double transplant gave me back my life

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Double transplant gave me back my life

2:00am Saturday 21st March 2009

By Katy Islip »

TAKING your doctor’s advice can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow, but it can mean the difference between life and death, as Clare Best knows all too well.

Clare, 27, was born with just one kidney and diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight. However, despite warnings from her doctor, she failed to manage her condition properly.

In 2007, her decision to ignore medical advice hit home. She needed a lifesaving double transplant operation after suffering organ failure and the loss of her sight.

Following the successful kidney and pancreas transplant she is now hoping to help other young people with diabetes make the right decisions about managing their condition before they do irreparable damage.

Clare, of Ferndown Close, Southend, said: “I know how difficult it is for young people living with diabetes. I never used to listen to the doctors and thought when all the bad things they warned me about happened I would be too old to care.

“I resented being told I couldn’t do the things my friends were doing and pushed all the advice to one side. I regret that so much. It put such a strain on my family and I know I couldn’t put them through that again.”

Her rebellion against the constraints of her condition and her refusal to heed her doctor’s warnings meant she often took her medication late or not at all.

Clare also refused to moderate her intake of unsuitable foods and, as she became older alcohol. She found herself on regular dialysis by 2006 and as her condition worsened she was told she was in need of a transplant aged just 25.

Further problems caused by her mismanaged diabetes also left Clare blind in one eye and with significant impairment in the other.

She said: “Losing my sight really destroyed me. The kidney problems were bad, but the eyesight problems have been really hard to come to terms with.

“It has taken me a long time to accept.”

Now she is hoping her experiences will help other young people realise the serious implications failing to manage the condition can cause.

“If my story touches even one person and makes them think twice then it’s a start,” she said. “I feel a huge debt to my donor. This is a second chance and I won’t be wasting it.

“The operation saved my life. Any longer on dialysis and I probably wouldn’t have made it. My favourite nurse used to cry sometimes because she could see the damage I had done and she was scared for my future.”

Clare underwent her multiple transplant at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge in 2007 and hasn’t looked back since.

She said: “I am planning to fly a plane for charity which I’m really looking forward to. I’m hoping to raise money for Addenbrookes and my local dialysis unit because they have been amazing through all my treatment.

“I am also writing a book about my experiences and I am going back to college to do a counselling course, because I feel I want to give something back and help others in the same situation I was in.

“Counselling has helped me so much.”

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/4217382.Double_transplant_gave_me_back_my_life/