Disease survivors should tell their inspiring stories: iLIVE

Times Live | Dr Rose Richards, English head, Writing Laboratory, Stellenbosch University


When I had my kidney transplant in 1991, I never imagined where it might eventually lead me.

I had fallen ill as a baby with a rare disease, haemolytic uremic syndrome, which left me with incurable kidney damage.

Despite a regimen of medication, visits to doctors and a very restrictive diet, my kidneys failed and I found myself on dialysis at 21, awaiting transplant.

I was one of the lucky ones. I was only on dialysis for about a year when I received my transplant. My new kidney was strong and healthy and I overcame the early settling-in period of rejection episodes, problems with medication and learning to live with a compromised immune system.

After my transplant my mother wanted me to write my story, partly so I could heal emotionally and partly so that I could use my story to inspire and help others. I wasn't sure what to tell. Though I could see no story beyond the medical story of procedures, medications and blood results, I knew my story involved much more than this, but I could not yet articulate it.

I spent the next decade or so escaping from my identity of being a person who had a transplant, passing as "normal". I was so immersed in passing for normal that when I applied for a mortgage in 2006 and was denied health insurance, it drove my breath out of my body with shock.

Read more: http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2012/05/11/disease-survivors-should-tell-their-inspiring-stories-ilive

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