It has been 37 days from the date of my diagnosis and we seem to have covered a lot of ground already. It is just worth pausing a putting a little context around how we got to be here.
I was due to donate a kidney to my wife who is a PKD sufferer on the 12th March It is the most common hereditary disease affecting 12.4 million people worldwide, the US alone there are over 600,000 who have the disease. I had spent the last 2 years having multiple blood tests and a whole host of scans and checks to make sure that I was fit enough and had the high levels of kidney function to allow such a process to proceed.
Whilst my kidney was an acceptable match for a direct transplant to Lou, we had decided to join the kidney paired donor service. In essence my kidney becomes available to donate to the pool and Lou becomes available to receive from the pool. The pool is around 350 couples every quarter that are looking for a better match than the one they have with their partner.
When someone is diagnosed with cancer this automatically makes them ineligible to remain in the paired pooling scheme. The tragedy of this was not only the fact that Lou was 2 weeks from a significant change in her life but a number of other couples were affected as well.
As with every knock back Lou has received over the last few years she was truly amazing. Her main thoughts and concerns were for my health and how we rid me of this disease. A super star as always.
There are increasing thoughts that cancers can be triggered by traumatic events. Over the last 3 years a number of events have struck our lives. In December 2015 my business partner took his own life. A brilliant man who was bipolar and for the previous 12 months found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the demons that stalked him. We have spent the last 3 years managing and administering his estate.
On the 24th August 2016 my brother and his wife were tragically killed in the earthquake in Amatrice in central Italy. My sister in law’s sister and I went to Italy to collect my niece and nephew who had been orphaned in the tragedy. Having brought them to Rieti a town an hour away from the earthquake I returned on the 25th to identify my brother and sister in law in make shift tented morgues with the 300 other bodies. Sights and sounds I will never forget.
A journey along the gotley canal! 