‘Selfless gift’ offers a second chance at life
As specialists swooped in, Anna Maharaj learned her kidneys had stopped working.
She was 21, she was terrified, and she was devastated.
The culprit was lupus – a disease in which the immune system attacks and damages healthy tissue in the body.
It was 1999 and Maharaj’s life went on hold as dialysis kept her alive and she hoped for a new kidney.
‘‘I didn’t get to have a 21st birthday party and all those things. I was in ICU fighting for my life,’’ she said.
Before then she’d been studying teaching at the University of Waikato, but the lupus she’d been diagnosed with at age 12 flared up again by the end of her second year.
‘‘When I got to [Waikato Hospital] and had the symptoms that I did, it was just all of a sudden all these specialists are there, the anaesthetist putting lines in my neck. Just saying ‘you have gone into end stage renal failure’.’’
Dialysis and the staff on the renal ward kept Maharaj alive for about 21⁄2 years, while her lupus was stabilised and specialists pushed to get her on the transplant list.
In 2002 she took a call saying there was a kidney available from a deceased donor.
Last year, 215 Kiwis got lifesaving organ transplants from 73 donors, according to Organ Donation NZ figures.
Many – including Maharaj – took part in Thank You Day yesterday, to recognise both living and deceased donors and their families.
On average, there are 550 people on active transplant waiting lists at any one time, and kidneys have the longest and largest wait list.
Maharaj is now 41, and the donated kidney has given her ‘‘sixteen-and-a-half years of extra time – borrowed time, as I call it’’.
‘‘Because of that selfless gift . . . there were several people who got a second chance at life.’’
Maharaj remembers arriving in Auckland for the transplant, then waking up in intensive care with her mum, Robyn Williams, holding her hand.
Her mother recited the Lord’s Prayer to calm her initial panic, and she then remembers feeling grateful she wouldn’t be tied to a dialysis machine for 4-6 hours, three times a week.
Maharaj was a tricky match for organ donation – her father, Skip Williams, was ruled out when melanoma was discovered.
She doesn’t know who her kidney came from but each year, on the anniversary of her transplant, she thinks of the family who lost someone as well as reflecting on the gift she received.
Even with the transplant, there have been hiccups – her body started rejecting it a few days after surgery, and she’s had further surgery through the years, and countless specialist appointments.
Some of the medical staffers looking after her have been with her for the 21-year journey.
‘‘That’s quite a neat thing,’’ she said. ‘‘All their hard work and all their care and here I am still alive and well, doing most of the things a normal 41-year-old could do.’’
A transplant is a treatment, Maharaj said – she still has lupus, still takes daily medications to stop her body rejecting the donated kidney, doesn’t drink, attends all her medical appointments and avoids stress.
But she got the chance to meet and marry Noel, and have a daughter, Jaimee – now 15.
‘‘In the early days I didn’t think I could have children, and I didn’t think I would reach 25, 30, let alone 41.’’
And she looks after her kidney ‘‘like it’s another baby’’.
Maharaj got more time with her parents, including stepmother Chris, more time with her late grandmother Letti, and she travelled.
She finished the teaching degree her kidney failure interrupted, and has added a postgraduate qualification and a few extra papers.
She’s currently a part-time teacher with Year 4-5 children in Auckland.
‘In the early days I didn’t think I could have children, and I didn’t think I would reach 25, 30, let alone 41.’’
Anna Maharaj