The gift that came 10 years early

One of the many conversations we had in the hospital, one of them is the possibility of a kidney transplant.

There are 2 types of kidneys available for transplants, kidneys from living donors and kidneys from donor who just passed away.

The chances of a cadaver kidney transplant in Singapore is like striking lottery. Other than a 10 year wait list, you have to be chosen from the hundreds of eligible potential recipients from the list.

Not everyone is eligible for a kidney transplant. In fact, the kidney transplant surgery is such a major surgery, the donor must be fit to give and the recipient must be fit to receive.

My mum did not have to think when the kidney transplant conversation popped up. She immediately volunteered, I did not even have the reaction time.

Everything changed when she volunteered. My doctors did the blood tests on me and found that I was unfit for transplant in my condition. I had extremely low hemoglobin count, less than 7g/dL. Normal for men being 13.1g/dL to 16.6g/dL. The minimum required for the surgery to happen was 10g/dL. Why 10mg/dL? This is to ensure that I have enough oxygen throughout the surgery so that I don’r die of asphyxiation when there is blood loss.

I had to be given regular blood transfusions to being the hemoglobin count up.

I was a vampire.

The kidney produces a hormone call erythropoetin which activates the bone marrow for red blood cells production. With kidney failure, they stop producing this for me so red blood cell production was impeded.I was having sudden nose bleeds that can last for hours. Think my colleagues back then would have seen the blood soaked tissue paper I had in the bins beside me in the office.

My doctors also confirmed that my mum is completely healthy and fit to donate. They had to get me to be fit to receive in the shortest amount of time. This was the sole deciding factor of not doing the surgery to have the veins and arteries rerouted to form an access large enough for the dialysis to happen.

And so, this marks the beginning of my year long dialysis journey.