After spending most of her life in and out of hospital, a determined student from Aberdeenshire is looking forward to graduation.
Spending hours on dialysis every week and having a transplanted kidney rejected is not how most students envisage campus life, but it has been the reality for 23-year-old Kate Kenyon during her degree course at Robert Gordon University.
Miss Kenyon from Turriff has suffered with chronic renal failure since the age of three. She was on peritoneal dialysis for four years as a child before receiving a kidney transplant from her mother at the age of seven, which failed 12 years later.
She said: “In January 2012, my transplanted kidney rejected. I was in hospital for six weeks and had to put my education on hold. It was an extremely hard time.
“Due to the extreme medication I was given, I missed two out of my four Christmas deadlines [at RGU] as I contracted meningococcal meningitis and pneumonia at the same time and ended back up in hospital.”
As a result, Miss Kenyon went on to redo second year three times, but despite these setbacks, at 2.40am on January 26 this year, she received the phone call she had been waiting for, and went ahead with a second transplant.
Now she is preparing to graduate from university, but says this would never have been possible without the transplants she has received.
She said: “I have to thank my donor’s family for allowing their relative’s organs to be used to save so many people’s lives, including, obviously, my own.
“I know campaigns say the same thing, how you can save a life, but it’s so true because so many people lose their lives waiting.
“There are needless losses of life because of organ failure, and if just one extra person signs up to the organ donor register, they could save up to nine lives.
“I would urge people to join, and if you’re not sure – if you had seen me on dialysis, you would sign up.”
Medical spokesperson for north-east patient body, PACT, Professor Jamie Weir, said: “The more people we can get to join organ and blood donor registers the better.
“There is a critical shortage across the UK, but by signing up you can alleviate a lot of trauma for patients and relatives and help people get their life back.”
Organ Donation Scotland – all you need to know
Across Scotland there are 540 people who are currently in need of a life-saving transplant.
There are 63 people in Scotland currently waiting on a liver transplant.
Less than one per cent of deaths in Scotland occur in circumstances where the person is able to donate their organs, so the more people that register, the more likely someone will be able to get the life-changing transplant they are desperately waiting for.
In Scotland, 42 per cent of people are currently on the NHS Organ Donor Register.
