Kidney op has wound the clock back for diabetes sufferer (From Dorset Echo)

Kidney op has wound the clock back for diabetes sufferer

9:16am Monday 9th March 2009 in Campaigns By Harry Hogger

DIABETES sufferer Andrew Jones says a double transplant has ‘changed his life beyond all recognition’ and has urged people to sign up for the NHS Organ Donor Register.

Mr Jones, 55, from Wool, said he struggled to climb a flight of stairs before his kidney and pancreas transplant in August 2007 but now he enjoys going for walks in the great outdoors.

He said: “It’s the most important thing that has happened to me in my life. It has wound the clock back some 20 years with regards to what I can do and life in general has changed beyond all recognition.

“Being a diabetic restricts your life to a point of just existing and when you have the transplant and can do all these things you realise what you have missed out on in your life.”

Mr Jones was first diagnosed with diabetes in 1984 and the affects gradually took their toll on his health.

He said: “Diabetes is an insidious disease which eats away at the organs – my eyesight and my kidneys deteriorated.”

Mr Jones had coronary surgery to restore his sight after going blind and around three years ago, with his kidneys working at 30 per cent of their efficiency, he was about to go on dialysis when he was offered the chance to go on the transplant waiting list.

Thanks to a liaison at Dorset County Hospital he was placed on the waiting list for a procedure up in Oxford and a year later he went in for the eight-hour operation.

The procedure did not involve removing his existing organs and he had a new kidney and pancreas transplanted from an anonymous donor.

He said: “I am in the unique situation of having three kidneys and two pancreas glands, although my originals aren’t much good.”

The operation was a complete success and now Mr Jones is reaping the benefits.

He said: “Before the operation I wouldn’t have been able to climb a set of stairs without stopping halfway for a rest.

“Afterwards, you feel you have got that get-up-and-go, a spark in you that makes you get up and do things.”

All Mr Jones knows about his donor was that she was a 27-year-old woman but he has written to her family through the transplant team.

He said: “It’s a very sobering experience to sit down and write a letter to a family you have never met expressing how grateful you are and the fact I am well but they have lost a loved one.”

Mr Jones, an engineer at Bovington Army Camp, said that he is a firm advocate of the NHS Organ Donor Register and would encourage anyone who has not yet done so to sign up.

He said: “I would urge anyone to get on the Organ Donor Register to join because it’s so important.

“I have never stopped telling people about it as to me it is a fantastic thing for people to do.”