Intro; transplant 19 years ago this month

Hi everyone, I hate dialysis and it hated me; thank goodness for vampire movies and mom. I was only on dialysis for 1 year and 2 months but during that time I was on every type of dialysis available. I started with APD but both attempts failed. I could never hold the amount of fluid I needed to and had severe pain with the first. After several months with both catheters the fluid would go in and would not come out. Luckily I have PKD and was in high output failure. Then I went to hemodialysis and I was in the hospital about every month until the transplant. While using a central line I was septic twice and had toxic shock once. My fistula would not develop big enough and the grafts (I have two) clotted off every 28 days. They would declot one day and it would be clotted off the next day. I never stopped my periods and my grafts clotted off each time my period started (not a good time to be regular). One day they tried doing dialysis right after the surgery to declot the graft and without using heparin and the "kidney" on the dialysis machine exploded and blood went everywhere and I got the solution in my system and spiked a temp of 103+ (my Hbq dropped to 6). I was on Coumadin, Persantine and ASA daily (all to thin my blood) to no avail. I also had a reaction to a new "kidney" on the dialysis machine and thought I was having a heart attack. Because I put out a large amount of urine I did not need any fluid taken off during dialysis and had a lot of problems with being too dry and passing out. My K+ was always low so my diet wasn't quite as restricted. Otherwise everything went well.

My Mom did not think she could donate a kidney because she is O- and I am O+ until she was watching a vampire movie on TV and learned that - can give to + but not the other way around. From that moment on she pestered me to take her kidney. Because I didn't think I was going to last much longer on dialysis and we are both CMV negative I gave in. She was the oldest donor at our hospital at 63 but she and the kidney she gave me are still going strong at 82 years of age.

I did have a setback at the 10 year mark when I went into acute renal failure; I got gout in my transplant kidney and caused it to fail. It is very rare to have gout (uric acid) in a solid organ but it is possible and of course I got it! With treatment the transplant has recovered and is working well enough to keep me going!