I'm ill, but if that seems like a self-evident statement on a blog about living with renal failure, note that I am not alluding to the fact I have no kidneys; kidney failure doesn't count as ill until I want to park in a disabled parking space. What I mean is, I have a cold. I have not had a cold for ages. Ironically enough, before I started dialysis - when I still had a functioning transplanted kidney and was ostensibly healthy - I used to get colds all the damn time. In order to stop my immune system identifying my new kidney as a foreign body and attacking it, I was taking a handful of immunosuppressant drugs, and whilst they provided a certain level of protection to the kidney, they also meant that I was at the mercy of whatever germs happened to be filtering through the nearest AC vent at any given time. Colds really went to town on me back then: the worst ones were closer to flu, put me out of action for days and took weeks to work their way out of my system. However, s
Living, if not always loving, life on the UK transplant list.