SISTERS WHO HAVE SHARED IT ALL... EVEN A KIDNEY (30 years!)

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SISTERS WHO HAVE SHARED IT ALL... EVEN A KIDNEY (30 years!)
Saturday August 18,2012
Brian Swanson

GRANDMOTHER Lorraine Campbell is celebrating her 21st birthday all over again – 30 years later.

But this time Lorraine is marking the day she got her second chance at life after having a kidney transplant.

It’s three decades since her sister Denise Boyd stepped in to donate one of her organs and Lorraine is thought to be Scotland’s longest surviving kidney transplant patient.

Lorraine, 52, received the organ as a 21-year-old at Glasgow’s Western Infirmary in 1982, five years after she
contracted glandular fever and her kidneys failed.

It was thought the donated organ would last a few years but there has been no need to replace it.

Lorraine, a classroom assistant, went on to have three children and three grandchildren and every year has a special transplant “birthday” party with Denise, now 49.

She said: “A lot of sisters share everything, but in our case that is actually true because I have her kidney. The organ has done me well.

“Without the transplant I doubt I would be here.”

Parents Rose and Jim Sneddon, both now 77, and brother Tom, 55, all took tests in the hopes of giving a kidney but none proved a match.

Denise, who also has a younger sister, Geraldine, now 42, had been nominating herself as a potential donor since
the age of 16 but was not allowed because of her youth.

But when she turned 18, and Lorraine was 21, they underwent the surgery. Council worker Denise, of Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, said: “It makes me so happy. The kidney has worked perfectly. I’m very proud that it’s mine.” 

The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 at Harvard University and the patient survived for seven years, with a kidney from his twin brother.

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary transplant expert Professor Stephen Wigmore said: “Donor kidneys usually last 20 years from a living donor and 10 years from a dead donor, so the fact that this patient has had hers for 30 years is an excellent achievement.

"I can’t think of any other patient that has had the same donor kidney for that long in Scotland.”

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/340526