Incredible bond between friends following kidney donation
A golf instructor whose kidneys suddenly stopped working said he is forever thankful to his childhood friend who stepped in to make an immensely generous offer.
Two years ago Ben Todd, 40, a golf instructor from Bath who now lives in Dubai, was rushed to hospital after his blood pressure started going through the roof.
Doctors found that the creatinine (a waste product removed by the kidneys) in Ben’s blood was 17 times the normal level and he was immediately placed on a week of continual dialysis.
Ben was told he had unknown primary kidney disease – both his kidneys had stopped working and started to shrink without any known cause.
Before this, Ben was living a healthy life. He frequently worked out at the gym and never suffered any illnesses so his diagnosis came as a huge shock. He now faced having dialysis three times a week in order to stay alive – unless donor organ become available.
He said: “It was really difficult to take. It was a shock and it changed my life completely. “Going on holiday was difficult. My job as golf instructor was affected – dialysis really takes it out of you and I just didn’t have as much energy I used to have. It puts a lot of restrictions on your life which also affected my wife and son.”
Sadly, no one in his family was able to donate a kidney – and that meant waiting for a deceased donation.
Ben said being reliant on dialysis and being always prepared for an organ donation which could come at any time was really tough.
"You get to the point where you are just waiting for the call. You start to going from optimistic to pessimistic. It eats away at you."
“You get to the point where you are just waiting for the call,” he said. “You start to going from optimistic to pessimistic. It eats away at you.”
Then, after two years of waiting, it felt like a miracle when someone Ben hadn’t seen since he was a child offered to donate one of his kidneys.
Alexis Tjolle, 45, had grown up as friends with both Ben and his sister Annie.
Alexis and Annie had been in and out of touch through mutual friends and started going out together a year ago. When Alexis heard that Ben was in need of a kidney he didn’t hesitate to offer his help.
Alexis made contact with numerous hospitals in order to find out if it was possible for him to donate a kidney and one of those was the Royal Free London.
The kidney transplant team arranged for Alexis to come to the hospital to get tested – and thankfully he turned out to be a complete match and eligible to donate a kidney.
Alexis said: “When the test results came back, I was over the moon. I was talking to my family and they were so supportive, but they also thought I was mad. But I always knew it was the right thing to do. But my view is that if you can do something to help, you should and to me there was no other option but to give a kidney.”
Ben said he was hugely grateful to Alexis for offering his kidney. He added: “I think it’s such an incredible thing, I can’t thank him enough. I don’t really have the words to describe it.”
"The care we received was absolutely incredible – we felt completely held throughout this whole process.”
Alexis had to undergo a gruelling set of check-ups to make sure he was healthy enough to donate an organ. He was tested every other week for his kidney function, his heart scan, blood tests.
Ben added: “It felt like a bit of a tight rope as we were getting closer. If I got an infection, it would mean the operation couldn’t go ahead. I didn’t want to get too hopeful – the odds were still stacked against us. I’ve been on the transplant list for two years – I didn’t want to get too excited.”
The surgery went ahead in June at the Royal Free London Private Patients Unit (RFL PPU)– funded by Ben’s Dubai health insurance. Both Alexis and Ben have made good recoveries and Ben will soon be going back to Dubai.
Annie explained her whole family are incredibly grateful for what Alexis has done. “I don’t think the words exist for the generosity that he’s shown. The drive he has to keep pushing to get it done. He is the most deeply kind person and we now all have an incredible bond for life.”
Alexis and Ben both had enormous praise for the care they had received in the RFL PPU.
Ben said: “The way that all these incredibly talented people come together to make impossible things happen – I was spellbound. I must give a special mention to Catherine O’Malley the living donor coordinator who was always so kind and caring – it really felt like I had her undivided attention - and also business development and customer service manager Eman Aboulnasr who was brilliant at moving things along.”
Alexis added: “The care we received was absolutely incredible – we felt completely held throughout this whole process.”
Ben and Alexis were looked after by our MDT teams, our live donor kidney transplant Clinical Nurse Specialist, Catherine O’Malley, and led by our consultants: Dr Rhys Evans (Associate Professor of Renal Medicine and Consultant Nephrologist), Dr Philip Masson (Consultant Nephrologist), Mr Prodromos Laftsidis (Consultant Kidney Transplant and Vascular Access Surgeon), Mr Ammar Al Midani (Consultant Renal Transplant and Vascular Access Surgeon), Dr Anish D Amlani (Consultant Anaesthetists) and Dr Marc Wittenberg (Consultant Anaesthetist).
