My experiences up to having a kidney transplant 20 years ago

David, tell us about your experiences of having your first kidney transplant. Leading up to it, how did you feel, what was going on? Well, I had been on dialysis for nearly nine years and for all but one of those years I had carried on running my business. I had a graphic art and design studio and it's a very high-pressure business. As four or five years went progressed I had to cut down my business to be able for me to be able to cope with dialysing three times a week. After eight years I was getting progressively more ill, very tired. I knew I was in desperate need of a transplant and I was wound up by the fact that over this period of time a transplant hadn't come through the normal system. So my wife and I looked at other countries where we could look at the idea of could we get a transplant but in the end although I did have offers in different countries I couldn't accept the moral idea of either paying for a transplant or not having the backup of a trusted NHS hospital and so in the end I decided I will wait and in fact I had planned a trip to Dublin where someone had said to me this is the place where lots of young people ride motorbikes and there are the possibility of having transplants from hospitals in Ireland. On the day before we were meant to go to Dublin I actually got a phone call from an Irish nurse who was at the Royal Free and she said David we think we've got kidney for you and I went in fully confident that although I was one of three people that I would get my kidney and I did.