Committed to Kidney Walk
Annual walks set for Sunday in Summerside and Charlottetown
On a Sunday in 2015, while Heather MacWilliams was recovering in Halifax from kidney transplant surgery, a dozen family members were not by her bedside. They were in Summerside participating in the annual Kidney Walk.
“I might’ve suggested it to them,” grinned the Springfield West woman.
Her husband, Michael, and their four daughters, along with two sons-in-law and five grandchildren, attended the awareness and fundraising walk.
“Until you’re affected by it, you don’t realize the situation you’re in, or that other people are in,” she reflected. “Then it becomes, ‘Where do I go from here? What do other people do?’ ” Anne Christopher
The MacWilliams family, including Heather, first participated in the walk in 2014, around the time Heather started peritoneal dialysis.
The walk has quickly become tradition for the family. Heather was back with the group last year, along with two more grandchildren, and they’re all planning to attend this Sunday for the walk that leaves from Summerside’s Credit Union Place at 2 p.m.
MacWilliams’ journey with the Kidney Foundation of Canada started 21 years ago. She and several family members were tested to see who could be a suitable donor for her brother who needed a kidney.
It was during that process that she learned she had a chronic kidney disease. Another sister donated a kidney to her brother.
Meanwhile, apart from routine tests, life continued pretty much as normal for MacWilliams. That is, until 2011 when she learned she was in end stages of renal failure.
“We have to decide how we’re going to proceed,” she recalls medical professionals advising her.
“That’s what really hit me,” she said, “because I figured I
had longer.”
She described what followed: “Then you go home and you tell your family, and everybody decides who is going to get tested, and how do you go about getting tested.”
No suitable matches were found. She was on peritoneal dialysis for close to a year before a donor kidney was found.
She’s pleased her family was able to attend the Kidney Walk in 2015 in her absence, and she’s grateful she is now able to continue to do the walk herself.
“Now, it’s just to get the awareness to the general public,” she said. “It’s just to let people know (kidney disease) does exist.”
Anne Christopher is the Kidney Foundation’s fundraising co-ordinator for Summerside west.
She said the Kidney Walk is one of the foundation’s biggest fundraising events, but she agrees with MacWilliams that the awareness piece is equally important.
“Until you’re affected by it, you don’t realize the situation you’re in, or that other people are in,” she reflected. “Then it becomes, ‘Where do I go from here? What do other people do?’ ”
MacWilliams admits she was not aware of how prevalent kidney disease was until it affected her family.