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Kidney Sisters


For Trisha  

The last thing I remember before I was wheeled into the operating theatre in Beaumont was a nurse saying that another woman had received the other kidney from the donor and she was doing well. When I came to hours later my bed had been placed in ICU next to the other woman whose name was Iris. I’m from Raheny and she was from a rural part of Galway and twenty years older than me. Iris was a grandmother while my children were young but we had an immediate affinity. It was like as if we each were pregnant with one of a pair of twins. But these twins wouldn’t be getting any bigger and would be in us for years… hopefully. And they were keeping us alive, instead of the other way around. Out of an enormous act of generosity somebody had decided to donate their vital organs, which lived on in us, enabling us to live longer, and I felt hugely grateful. Iris and I swopped stories about hospitals and births and husbands and children. Even when we left hospital to go to our different homes we still kept in touch. ‘Kidney sisters’ is my what one of my boys called us.  I used to ring Iris every couple of months. I think I felt anxious about how she was doing and how her kidney was working. And when I heard she was going through setbacks I felt afraid it was going to happen to me too. But it never did. My kidney seemed to be special and my consultant told me my readings were exceptional. I felt a bit guilty about that sometimes. But gradually over the years Iris and I stopped contacting each other. And I often forgot that I even had a transplant. 

Paul Daly is an IAHIP accredited psychotherapist working in private practice and community-based therapy in Dublin. 

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