Kidney transplant was gift of life 
 

 
Still going strong . . . Hazel Jones looks at an Otago Daily Times
feature from 1983 written about her life hooked up to a dialysis machine.

By Juliet Smith

Hazel Jones (55) never imagined she would live to see her daughter grow up, get married and have children.
She regards every day as precious and continually gives thanks for the kidney transplant that saved her life almost 21 years ago.

"I still think of the gift that person gave me. It was the greatest gift of all and I would rather have this than win Lotto."

Mrs Jones, who remains on anti-rejection drugs, suffered renal failure after an untreated virus ravaged her kidneys in her early 30s. She spent every second day for three years on a dialysis machine for six to eight hours, describing it as feeling like "20 years of hell".

Her daughter, Tracey Sheridan, was 11 then, and now has two children, Liam and Keegan, whom Mrs Jones is looking forward to seeing grow up.

"People can go a long time on dialysis but it doesn't give them any quality of life. I was quite sick and couldn't read or do anything when I was on it".

She regularly vomited when hooked up to the machine, an experience written about in an Otago Daily Times feature on her in 1983.

"See how fat I was then. It was all the steroids they gave me," she says, flipping through a scrapbook of newspaper stories about her experience and others' of dialysis and transplants.

Some days she did not want to get on the machine but her husband, Ivan Jones, would always talk her into it and make her prepare for it.

She played tricks in hospital, including ringing the bell by her bed for no reason, and standing on egg sandwiches brought by nurses because the idea of eating them made her want to be sick again.

"That was a way of dealing with things. The nurses would just laugh."

The transplant kidney was placed in her abdomen at Christchurch Hospital and her original kidneys have now shrivelled to the size of peas. They were not infecting her body so were not removed.

Mrs Jones, who is a receptionist at Leith House Rest Home, encourages people to donate organs although she believes it is an individual choice.

"I would never force it and I don't agree it should be up to the family. The person needs to make their own mind up beforehand and the family shouldn't be able to veto it."

She acknowledges the difficulties parents face with the death of a child.

Her transplant came from a young child and, in those days, recipients did not find out about the donor.
"I really didn't want to know, to start with. How can you actually thank a person for the gift of life? You can't".
But she still thinks about how old the donor would have been now and wonders about the family.

Saturday, 22-May 2004  Otago Daily Times