“It’s sad, even though I have a donor, I’m still at risk of dialysis”: Frederick has to wait three months before being transplanted with his brother’s kidney

His file has been ready for two weeks. After four months of tests and procedures, Frédéric received the green light from the transplant team at Toulouse University Hospital: he could receive the kidney his brother agreed to give him. For this 48-year-old from Aveyron, time is running out: he was transplanted twice with a kidney and a pancreas in 2010 due to his diabetes, requiring a new transplant. His kidney graft, from a deceased donor, almost no longer works.

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“I’m one step away from dialysis and I don’t want to relive it,” explains Frederick, who painfully recalls his first pre-transplant sessions. “It’s so hard physically and mentally, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, this thing shouldn’t exist,” he whispers between anguish and anger.

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“Dialysis before transplant will weaken me”

Because Frederick has just learned that he won’t be able to receive his brother’s kidney for three months. “I was told a date in July but my kidneys are functioning at their lowest level in months. I’m close to dialysis at 90% and if that happens, I’ll be four times too weak for a transplant. I’ll be out. Flu, I rate On day 15 I get blood tests, I get an EPO injection to get ready, my brother has made several trips to Rengueil hospital to get all the tests while working and I’m told there isn’t enough room. Operating theater… I can understand. No”, testifies the patient.

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Since 2004, it has been possible to donate a kidney to a loved one during your lifetime. To promote this type of transplant, which represents additional years of life without dialysis for people suffering from chronic kidney failure, the Bioethics Law of July 7, 2011 expanded the list of relatives who can donate (son, daughter, brother, sister, wife, grandfather grandmother, uncle, aunt, first cousin, father or mother’s spouse, close relative with proof of cohabitation or emotional relationship of more than two years).

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Dozens of patients in the same situation

For Frederick, his wife was a volunteer but, for medical reasons, she was not selected. “After that I asked my only brother and I can assure you that it is very difficult, not that I asked him to give me mustard on the table… He accepted, he did all the procedures up to the court (of a magistrate donor consent, editor’s note must be registered), he set himself to his work and there, he could not understand why he had to wait so long. For the creation I had seen, my brother’s pen would be the best I had and getting His approval, I thought I had done the hardest part. It’s sad. If I have to go on dialysis, I don’t know how I will last till the month of July”.

For Professor Naseem Qamar, coordinator of the Department of Nephrology and Organ Transplantation at Toulouse University Hospital, Frederic’s anger is legitimate. “I have dozens of patients in this case who, despite being a donor, are at risk of going through dialysis before a transplant, and the transplant gives them a better life and is less expensive for health insurance. It becomes more and more difficult. Explain them.