Kidney patient Mark ‘thrilled’ to be football fan of the month
LIFE-LONG Northern Ireland supporter and kidney patient Mark Dobson has been named as the Irish Football Association’s fan of the month.
Mark (24) is the son of former UUP MLA Jo-Anne Dobson and writes a weekly column in the Belfast Telegraph about what it’s like being on home dialysis.
He has been hailed by the Northern Ireland team as he would regularly have dialysis before attending games.
At just five weeks old Mark was diagnosed with renal reflux which left him with only 19% function in one of his kidneys.
When he was 15 he received a donor kidney transplant at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, which gave him a healthy life for more than eight years until it began to shut down and was removed in August this year.
Since then he’s been on dialysis — three times a week for four hours at a time — at Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry.
Mark said: “A massive thanks to Northern Ireland — I’m absolutely thrilled to be October’s fan of the month and I’m also thrilled that the team are joining me in promoting the life-saving power of organ donation. “I’ve had kidney problems since birth, but as a life-long Northern Ireland fan I’ve been part of the Green and White Army at every home game in the last 18 years, except for one — and that was when I was having kidney transplant surgery in 2009.”
Mum Jo-Anne thanked the Northern Ireland team for their “consistent and powerful support” for organ donation and recalled how thrilled Mark was when he got the chance to meet manager Michael O’Neill earlier this month.
“Thank you to the team, management and fans for your consistent and powerful support for organ donation and for this honour for Mark,” she said.
Mark said he won’t let being on dialysis stop him from following the team as they aim for World Cup play-off glory next month.
“This year has brought massive changes for me but if I have to pack up my dialysis machine and bring it the whole way to Russia then I will,” he added.
“I want to encourage all my fellow Northern Ireland fans to think about organ donation and what it would mean to be able to save up to seven lives.”