Love, the gift of life and a medical miracle
HUSBAND TO HELP SAVE WIFE IN PIONEERING SURGERY
COMPLEX swap op surgery is set to save strangers’ lives, including this Tyneside mum.
When Andrea Keys was told her kidneys were starting to fail, husband Stuart jumped at the chance to help by donating one of his own.
Unfortunately the pair, from Throckley, Newcastle, were not a match, but Stuart still has the opportunity to help Andrea - and save a stranger’s life at the same time through an extraordinary fourway ‘kidney swap.’
The exchange will see eight patients go under the knife in a series of interlinked operations - performed in a single day at four different hospitals, with four organ donors and four recipients. Andrea’s health problems began at the age of 14 when she was diagnosed with Wilson’s Disease - a genetic disorder which results in a build-up of copper in the body.
“She was told that without a liver transplant she would be dead within three weeks,” said Stuart.
The transplant was successful, but in a cruel twist the medication Andrea was given to stop her body rejecting the new liver then started
causing her kidneys to fail.
It also caused her to develop arthritis, forcing her to quit her job as a groom, and leaving her in need of a total knee replacement on both legs.
Stuart, 41, said: “It’s very difficult to get your head round - the medicine has kept her alive but it’s made her worse at the same time.”
Four years ago Andrea, also 41, began feeling unwell and lethargic, and was eventually told she was suffering kidney failure and would need another transplant.
She currently spends hours a day hooked up to a dialysis machine at home as she waits for the life-saving operation - a process which leaves her constantly tired.
Stuart offered to donate one of his own kidneys to his wife of 17 years, but tests revealed he and Andrea weren’t a match for a transplant.
But the pair, who are parents to Lara, 14, and Louis, 12, were thrown a potential lifeline when they were offered the chance to be part of a paired donation scheme.
Under the programme, when a donor and recipient are incompatible or mismatched, they are matched with another donor and recipient pair in the same situation.
The kidneys are then swapped between one incompatible donor and recipient and another mismatched pair.
This set of linked transplants will involve a four-way swap between hospitals across the country - with Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital one of the four.
If Stuart and Andrea are successfully matched the transplants will be carried out in a single day July 18 - in four carefully co-ordinated operations.
Stuart said: “This only happens four times a year so we’ve been very lucky to get a chance.
“I’ve been successfully matched with someone and they’re optimistic they’ve got a match for Andrea as well.
“I know it’s going to be hard and we’re both going to be incapacitated for a while if it goes ahead, but dialysis is such a drain on Andrea at the moment so I’m looking forward to getting her better.
“She’s had some terrible luck in her life and a really tough time recently.”
Ahead of the operation, Stuart is planning a charity hike up Snowdon to collect a drilling tool which was left there last year by a work colleague at Shell and Auger Drillers during another charity walk.
All money raised will go to the transplant team at the Freeman Hospital.
She was told that without a liver transplant she would be dead within three weeks