“Dave” the kidney

Hello, most people know my story but here’s a wee breakdown for those who don’t.

My name is Rachel and I was born with the genetic lung condition called Cystic Fibrosis, my life has been hospitals, operations and many other procedures. I had a heart and lung transplant 20 years ago which saved my life - it was a domino so this means I received heart and lungs and someone received my heart. So I’ve been a donor too :) unfortunately that came with risks as does any operation. The medication to keep the transplant alive destroys the kidneys and last year I was activated on the kidney transplant list, my partner began testing to be my donor but wasn’t a match so we entered the kidney share scheme in the hope that he would donate to someone and their person would donate to me. I didn’t hold much hope as I began to badly deteriorating before Christmas time. In January I was rushed to hospital and crashed into dialysis and this became my life 3 x a week for 6 hours on top of other hospital appointments when I wasn’t at dialysis. Luckily at the beginning of may my partner received a phone call to say we had a match in the share scheme and on the 29th of may 2024 my partner donated and I received a kidney. I’m almost 2 weeks post op, the kidney has been slow and didn’t wake up the way they thought it would but it’s started going in the right direction. I would love to give back to the dialysis unit, these nurses are amazing!! They became like a family and I spent most of my week with these nurses, I couldn’t have got through sessions without them at the Queen Elizabeth Uni Hospital on Govan Road! I cannot praise these ladies enough. I met patients along the way and we would share stories and I’d love to be able to buy resources to make their dialysis session more comfortable, relaxing even little care packages. I hope this is possible