Chris Stanley
Kim Hewson knows more than most what it’s like to rely on the kindness of strangers.
Living with polycystic ovaries, kidneys and liver, she’s had two organ transplants – and received life-saving blood products made from the donations of more than 30 people.
“Without them, I wouldn’t be here,” shares Kim, 66, who was first diagnosed with polycystic kidneys 27 years ago.
The condition causes cysts to grow on the affected organs, eventually causing them to fail. Dwindling energy and exhaustion doing everyday tasks was the first sign something wasn’t right for Kim, who in 1998 was working in a factory and raising her two then-teenage children Toni and Shane.
“It gets worse and worse, until you can’t even walk around the supermarket and it’s time to go on dialysis,” she explains.
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Kidney failure
In 2002, with her kidneys failing, the Timaru mother began commuting to Christchurch, spending Monday through Friday on dialysis for up to six hours each day and returning home to her family for the weekend.
“Before you go on dialysis, you’re feeling really crook,” says Kim. “On dialysis, I felt a lot better. Then I had to wait until a kidney became available.”
Without dialysis or a transplant, it can be fatal.
Later that year, Kim got a call in the middle of the night that there was potentially an organ donor with a kidney match for her.
“You just get a phone call to say, ‘We think we have a kidney. Get here as soon as you can,’” she says.
Leaping out of bed, Kim raced to Christchurch Hospital, where she learned, disappointingly, that the kidney wasn’t suitable. And so the waiting game began again. In 2003, she had a call in the middle of the night, this time successfully receiving a kidney from a young woman who was in a car accident.
Kim received four units of red blood cells during the surgery. A New Zealand Blood Service spokesperson explains, “When a patient needs more than three units of blood during surgery, it typically indicates significant bleeding and in such cases, a blood transfusion can be life-saving.”
Kidney transplant surgery has a mortality rate of around 10 to 15 percent.
Life after her transplant
After recovering from surgery, the difference was instant for Kim.
“It was just amazing,” smiles Kim, who now helps run the South Canterbury Kidney Support Group. “My family reckons that when we went to the supermarket for the first time after my transplant, I was running around the shop!”
Several years later, Kim was able to write to her organ donor’s family.
“I told them how grateful I was and how good my life was, that if it wasn’t for them letting me have her kidney, I wouldn’t be here.”
They wrote back and even though it’s 22 years since she had the transplant, Kim insists, “You can’t put a value on it.”
Polycystic liver and ovaries
It’s the simple things she enjoys most about being well enough to live an everyday life, like walking her dog and spending time with family and friends. In 2018, Kim learned she also had a polycystic liver and ovaries, and the cysts on her liver were growing rapidly.
In near-constant pain, medication barely helped. Because the cysts were too big to remove surgically, Kim was put on the waiting list for a liver transplant.
“I was in and out of hospital,” remembers Kim.
“It got to the stage where my lungs collapsed because my liver grew so big, it crushed my other organs.”
Polycystic organs are a genetic condition that Kim’s late mother also had – although Kim learned of her diagnosis and received a transplant before her mother did.
Thankfully, her children didn’t inherit it and it doesn’t skip a generation, so her grandchildren won’t be affected either.
In 2022, she underwent a liver transplant in Auckland, a high-risk procedure where blood product transfusions are vital for survival.
Kim received 65 transfusions of blood products, including red blood cells, platelets and plasma from more than 30 donors.
With National Blood Donor Week on June 9-15, Kim has a simple plea to others to donate.
“It only takes a short amount of your time and it’s not painful,” she says. “And you could save somebody’s life.”
For more information or to book a donation appointment, visit nzblood.co.nz or call 0800 448 325.
By the numbers
- Every year, around 30,000 people living in New Zealand have their lives saved or improved by blood donors.
- Only around four percent of the eligible population are donors.
- New Zealand Blood Service needs to collect more than 5000 donations every week to meet demand.
- Demand for plasma products – the liquid component of blood – is increasing. In the next 12 months, 4000 new donors will be needed to continue to meet demand.
- There is no alternative to blood – blood donors save lives.
