Hemal Kanvinde
Renal
India

This story begins from my childhood when I was 5-6 years old. I had a urine infection and was feeling a lot of burning sensation and would cry a lot due to the pain. My mother treated it with some home remedies; I have a very vague memory of this. Then the same problem surfaced again during my college days, but I hesitated to tell my mother. I felt that if I tell my mother, I will have to go to the doctor, and he would examine that area. I was scared just thinking about it. This happened during the year 1980, that is some 45 years ago. At that time, I did not have courage to share such things with my mother. I could not sleep properly at night and spent many nights like this and finally, when I gathered courage and told my mother, she took me to our family doctor. I was very scared. I did not know which area he would examine. But nothing like that happened. He gave me a week’s course of antibiotics which cured my infection, and I started feeling normal. I could not believe that such a big problem could be solved in such an easy way. I heaved a sigh of relief, but it was too late by then. The functioning of my left kidney was affected and it‘s working gradually declined. I came to know about this during my pregnancy in 1993 at the time of sonography and since then I started getting myself checked regularly every year. But in the routine check-up of 2010, it was found that creatinine, (a waste product that healthy kidney filters out of the blood into the urine) an important indicator of the proper functioning of kidney, had started increasing in the blood, which was an indication that my kidneys were failing. By 2015, both the kidneys stopped working, which ultimately led to kidney transplant. My kidney transplant operation was successfully done on 25 March 2015 due to donation of kidney by my husband. I would call it an unusual incident when a husband donates his kidney to his wife because in our society a mother easily donates her organs to her child, a wife to her husband and a sister to her brother but it is rare for a father to donate his organs to his child, brother to donate his organs to his sister or a husband to his wife. Today I have completed 10 years of kidney transplant and am living a healthy life. My husband, who is himself a paediatrician, without any hesitation, donated not only his kidney but also his better kidney and proved how much he cares for his partner’s life and today, thanks to him, I have got the opportunity to live a healthy life again, for which I will always be grateful to him. I am also thankful from the bottom of my heart to all family members and friends who stood with us in this difficult time and were supportive in keeping our morale high.