Organ donation ‘really does make a difference’

THREE times a week, Tallaght man Riyadh Abdelkader goes to hospital at 5am and endures four-hour stints of dialysis while awaiting a kidney transplant.

Riyadh, 40, who is from Old Bawn, was fit and healthy up until 2007, when he was unexpectedly diagnosed with end-stage renal kidney failure at the age of 23.

The diagnosis came about after Riyadh, who runs his own graphic and website design company, began to feel unwell and went to the hospital after being urged to go by his mother and his now wife.

“It was very sudden,” Riyadh, who is a past pupil of Old Bawn Community School, told The Echo.

“I didn’t drink or smoke, I did kickboxing in the Golden Cobra in Jobstown, I played football – I was really fit.

“They think what caused it is that I had a chest infection when I was in my early teens and there was scar tissue on my kidneys from that and they didn’t grow properly.

“I was flying, I was fit and healthy, but within four to six weeks, it was totally different.

“I thought that I was just worn out, but when I went into hospital, they said I only had one per cent kidney function, and if I’d gone to sleep that night I probably wouldn’t have woken Riyadh’s first dialysis treatment lasted 17 hours, due to the high level of toxins that had built up in his system in the time leading up to his diagnosis.

Three years after his diagnosis, Riyadh received a kidney transplant that lasted for five years, before it failed and his body rejected it in December 2015.

Since then, he has been receiving dialysis three – and sometimes four – times a week and takes 18 different medications a day while waiting for a new transplant.

Riyadh Abdelkader receiving treatment

The treatment impacts Riyadh in numerous ways, including causing aches and pains in his joints and muscles, severe headaches, brain fog, and itching, but it is essential to keep him alive.

It also disrupts his family life with his wife and their two children, as holidays have to be meticulously planned to account for Riyadh’s treatment and his wife often has to collect their children when he’s in hospital.

Riyadh is sharing his story for Organ Donor Awareness Week, which runs from April 20 to 27, to show the difference that organ donation can make to the lives of those waiting for transplants.

He is currently waiting for a match for a kidney donation that will be compatible with the raised antibodies in his system that led to his first transplant being rejected.

His younger sister has opted into a ‘swap’ system with the NHS in Belfast, where she will donate

her kidney to an anonymous recipient when a matching kidney is found for her brother.

When asked what message he wants to get out about organ donation, Riyadh said: “It really does make a difference.

“I was fit and healthy before this happened and I never knew about organ donation.

“Until it hits home, and it happens to you or to someone close to you, you don’t realise the impact of organ donation.”

For more information on organ donation or to sign up for an organ donor card, visit the Irish Kidney Association’s website.