Jeff Stanton
March 10th, 2008
I knew from the start I didn’t want to spend my days hooked up to a machine, watching my blood being filtered in and out of my body. But in 2005 when I found out that my kidneys were no longer functioning adequately, I was afraid the dialysis machine would be my only option.
I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in the early 1990s, but the symptoms had been present since my teen years. Ten years later, the kidney disease finally caught up to me when my renal function reached an all-time low. I had two choices: dialysis or organ transplant. Both can been tiring and risky. Luckily, I didn’t have to enter a transplant waiting list as I had willing donors in my family. They were immediately tested and within weeks my sister was determined to be a match. But I was told I would need dialysis to sustain by body in the interim; I proved them wrong by staying off dialysis for the next 6 months. During the final two months leading up to my transplant, the dialysis was able to remove toxic substances from my blood – acting as my kidneys.
The road to recovery since my transplant hasn’t been easy – including two acute rejections and 10 hospitalizations in 14 months – and the process of managing 10-15 medicines a day is challenging. But between a combination of immunosuppressants, a careful diet and daily physical activity, my kidney function has improved to a near-normal level. I’ve now been living with a new, healthy kidney for two years and couldn’t be more grateful to my sister, doctors and the combination therapies that are helping me live a full, productive life.
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