PLEASE SAVE ME
Shiarn seeks kidney donor after test for blood pressure leads to life-threatening diagnosis
STUCK in an agonising limbo as she waits for a new kidney, Shiarn Daniels has issued a heartbreaking plea for a stranger to save her life. Shiarn’s world was turned upside down last year when a test to find the source of her high blood pressure revealed that her kidney function had dropped to 16%.
The news came completely out of the blue and shattered her life as a normal, happy-go-lucky 25-year-old.
“Even the hospital aren’t sure why it’s rapidly dropped like that,” said Shiarn. “It was because my blood pressure was sky high that I ended up getting tested – and they just found my kidney function was low.”
Shiarn, from Walker, Newcastle, is now in the last stage of kidney failure, with her function having dropped to 8% since last year. She has been told that her only hope is a kidney transplant and she has been on the waiting list for a new organ since October. But a donor is proving difficult to find – and Shiarn is now appealing for an altruistic donor to save her life.
Family and friends have been tested in the hope of helping her, but the only person who proved to be a match decided not to go ahead with the transplant.
As she faces an anxious wait on the list, Shiarn is on dialysis every night to keep her alive.
Her condition has also forced her to stop working as a carer and claim benefits to help her get by.
“They’ve helped me to stay part-time, doing activities, but I can’t lift things so doing my old job wasn’t an option,” said Shiarn.
“It’s really taking a toll. I’ve been put on depression tablets because of it.
“With the kidney failure I’m constantly exhausted; I find it hard to do daily tasks such as walking to the shops. I do get pain sometimes, especially when I’m using the [dialysis] machine. I have sleepless nights and just get really down and depressed.”
Shiarn’s appeal for a stranger to be her saviour comes as new figures show 33 people in the North East have received a kidney transplant from a stranger in the last five years – thanks to someone they didn’t know donating altruistically while they are still alive.
Those who donate a kidney anonymously while they are alive are ‘gamechangers’ in the fight to increase the number of kidney transplants for those on the waiting list in the North East each year, according to NHS Blood and Transplant.
Altruistic donations can start transplant ‘chains’ through the UK’s kidneysharing schemes, whereby people who have been unable to find a compatible friend or relative are matched up with donors they don’t know elsewhere in the country, with a few transplants taking place at the same time.
There are currently 220 people waiting for a kidney in the North East and 66 people have died on the transplant waiting list in the last five years.
Shiarn said: “If anyone out there wants to do something really good in their life and donate a kidney, get in touch with the Freeman Hospital.”
■ For information on living donation see www.organdonation.nhs.uk.