Organ donation gives Ana a second chance at life

A fit medical underwriter and long-distance runner has been given a second chance at life thanks to a family’s decision to donate their child’s organs.

Anandani Peries (Ana), from Rochester, lived an active life including commuting to London and had no kidney issues until 2010, when a routine blood test revealed a drop in her kidney function. It stabilised, but in 2015 the situation worsened until she was found to have less than five per cent kidney function.

She spent seven and a half years on dialysis, needing treatment for four hours at a time, three days a week, until a donor kidney became available in April 2023.

Details of the donor are kept confidential, but Anandani was told it was a young child who had died.

She said: “I think of the donor and their family often and I feel very sad, because I know there is a family who have lost someone so loved. I know what it was like, the heartbreak when I lost my mother and my father. It is very difficult.

“I am so grateful for their decision to donate their loved one’s organs. I think about the donor and give thanks every New Year, Christmas, my own birthday, and on days that I am able to accomplish something significant or help the elderly person I give care to.

“I especially think of them on the anniversary of the transplant surgery.

“I am alive because of their decision; before the transplant I was like the walking dead.”

Anandani finds herself putting a hand over where the kidney is to protect it if she is in a crowd or squeezing through a gap.

She said: “I will do everything to protect my kidney that has given me life.

“There are not enough words to express the gratitude I have for the donation and that I have been given the freedom to live.

“It means I can care for others and be there readily, instead of trying to fit my life around the dialysis. Just to be able to drink water freely without a fluid restriction, I can’t explain the feeling.

“I know my donor gifted several of their organs, imagine how many people they gave life to and how my donor lives on in me and the other recipients.”

Anandani is sharing her story for Organ Donation Week to encourage others to consider deciding to donate their organs, such as kidneys, lungs or liver, to help others after they die.

There are around 8,000 people waiting for a transplant in the UK, and last year more than 450 people died before an organ became available.

Anandani, 57, said it had been a difficult decision to accept the transplant when the call came.

She said: “I was actually in an extremely emotional state, perhaps because I knew it was a young child who had died.

“I experienced a lot of complications with my health as a consequence of the kidney failure in the years I was on dialysis.

“After everything I had gone through, I wondered what the purpose was in having a transplant and whether it would lead to more going wrong with my body.”

Anandani had to get to Guy’s Hospital in London within three hours and took a taxi, thinking she could change her mind when she got there.

But conversations with her clinical team reminded her how unwell she was and that she needed the new kidney.

She said: “Both the senior staff nurses at my dialysis unit, Bindu Roy and Tino Preposi, and my dear old 80-year-old friend Hussein Osman, were comforting, encouraging and supporting me in my sobbing state.

“I want to thank them as I was completely alone. I think my sub conscious was trying to give me the best chance of staying alive, which is why I got a taxi for £150 in the first place.

“I have no regrets now and I realise that I have a very good quality of life compared to when I was on dialysis.”

Anandani described being on dialysis as being ‘alive but not living’.

She said: “You don’t realise how difficult life is on dialysis, until it stops, because you just have to keep going.

“You are deprived, compromised, with the addition of a financial burden.

“For me, the kindness, care and interaction of the staff at my dialysis unit helped to make my dialysis more acceptable. They are a wonderful group of individuals.

“Of course, a special thanks to Dr John, who was my consultant at the time, he worked with me, when I would question my treatment or some medical fact, Dr John was explaining and teaching, which was useful to me.

"All my surgery, medical interventions and hospital stays had to be managed in conjunction and coordination with dialysis, fluid and food restrictions. 

“It was tough, but the team at St Thomas's Hospital were outstanding in their organisation to collaborate with multiple areas for an efficient and productive outcome and care for me. 

“From my heart I truly thank them.”

Anandani believes distress may have exacerbated her health problems, she had a distressing time in 2009, and then again in 2014. She also became a carer for her bedbound mother and was then made redundant due to company cut backs in 2015.

She said: “I had no symptoms to begin with and I think part of that was because I was incredibly fit.

“I ate healthily, walked miles and ran long distances. In 25 years I had just 11 days off work for illness.

“I was always a calm person but I think potentially I had internalised the distress and it was affecting my body. I was gravely ill in 2015, but I just kept going.

“I have always been determined, focused, independent and have a military mindset if I want to achieve something. Initially I thought I could turn it around again and stabilise but it wasn’t happening and my kidney function was under five per cent.

“My consultant said if I didn’t start dialysis in November I wouldn’t see the next year.”

Anandani initially started peritoneal dialysis at home, spending 10 hours at night and an hour in the afternoon hooked up to a machine to filter her blood. But she developed a severe infection 11 months on and needed emergency treatment in hospital.

After that she started on haemodialysis at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, before a space became available at East Kent Hospitals’ satellite renal unit at Medway Hospital.

She was placed on the transplant waiting list in 2017, but the routine checks found the arteries around her heart were more than 97 per cent blocked and she needed a quadruple heart bypass, which took place in April 2018. Surgeons used veins and arteries from her left leg. Unfortunately, she later developed an infection in the leg where the veins and arteries were excavated and spent a further two months in hospital with two more operations to save her leg and life.

Anandani said: “The cardiac surgeon was aghast at the state of my heart arteries, they were blocked with calcium due to filtering difficulties without kidney function.

“I had no symptoms at all, although it was a heart attack waiting to happen. Again, I believe my previous fitness helped a lot.

“It felt like a never-ending domino effect, with the kidneys, then the heart, then the infections, and then another hernia repair caused by the peritoneal dialysis tube.”

The hernia repair needed 48 staples, and again led to complications, this time during Covid-19 restrictions. Anandani was then able to have the kidney transplant. She had been told she needed a new kidney within five years of her quadruple bypass otherwise she would likely need another heart bypass.

Her transplant happened five years to the day of her heart surgery.

Anandani developed a serious infection a few weeks after her transplant and had to spend four weeks in hospital, then have six weeks of daily 24-hour intravenous antibiotics via a pump fitted daily by district nurses at their unit. This meant she could avoid another six-week stint in hospital.

The transplant medication has given her a fatty liver and diabetes, which is proving difficult to control, but she has no regrets.

She said: “Even after all that I am still so deeply grateful and feel blessed to have this chance and to have my health.

“Many people do not get a second chance but thanks to the selflessness of the donor’s family I do.

“I would also like to thank the transplant teams both at Guy’s hospital in London and then Kent and Canterbury Hospital who are my regular medical people. They are just simply wonderful with their attention to safeguarding my transplant and care for me.

“Dr Delaney has been a constant supportive professional throughout my entire journey with a holistic approach to my health and wellbeing, I am sure he feels a sense of achievement seeing me back to life.”

You can read more about donating organs and how to register your decision at  https://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/what-we-do/transplantation-services/organ-donation-and-transplantation/