Everybody talks about The Power of Social Media, sometimes so much so that it seems like a cliche, but looking at my phone for the first time after surgery definitely made me a believer! I have never in my life seen so many texts, Facebook messages, Tweets, IG tags, missed calls and other notifications. It appeared word had spread. I also promptly discovered that our plan to keep it secret from everyone still the NKF
I arrived at the hotel in Blackpool feeling mightily impressed with myself for having lugged the cycler on the train on my own (well, almost on my own, the station staff helped!). I checked in and then went for dinner with some friends, both of whom are transplant recipients. After dinner we went for a walk to look at the Illuminations and have a drink. While we were walking we spotted a tram with a
I’ll never forget looking out the window while the Baxter courier delivered my first two weeks of PD supplies. When he left, I was surrounded by a mountain of cardboard boxes. I could have built an epic fort, had I been so inclined. Sadly for the cat, I wasn’t. I remember a lot of my friends saying that this was when they properly realised this was their life for the foreseeable future. That was why
On the 4th of August 2016, I went to have some routine bloods before a scheduled clinic appointment a few days later. I felt fine and went and wandered around the supermarket afterwards. But that evening, our landline rang. It almost never rings. On the other end was a registrar from the hospital. He explained that my bloods had shown a huge deterioration in my remaining renal function. My eGFR was down to 8, and
Unfortunately, I relapsed in October 2013, and quickly became well acquainted with the nephrology department of my local hospital, which, fortunately, is a large teaching centre. Back onto steroids I went, and more Rituximab was scheduled for April 2014, our thinking being that it slowed things down last time, and we might get equally lucky again. This time it only partially worked. My kidneys continued to deteriorate, and I was placed on the transplant list
I’m Holly. I’m a writer, speaker and kidney patient advocate currently living in northern England.
