Mum who lost five relatives to kidney disease gets miracle life-saving donor

Primrose Granville stood in the shower, her tears hidden by the cascade of warm water as the devastating news sank in. Her kidneys were failing.

At first she could not bear to tell her family. She had already watched mum Naomi and sister Ingrid suffer through a combined 23 years of dialysis before they received life-saving transplants.

Other relatives were not so lucky. Primrose, 50, had lost at least five of her family, including her gran, to the same hereditary kidney disease.

She says: “I didn’t want my family to see me struggling and worry after
everything they had been through.

“I spent so much time with my mother on dialysis, watching her deteriorate.

“She was so sick I prepared myself to bury her three times. I was terrified of going through that myself.”

Against the odds, Primrose waited just six months for a suitable kidney. Her transplant last year was days before she was due to start dialysis.

Her mum is still going strong 15 years after her transplant. Ingrid has been free from dialysis for the four years since her surgery.

Primrose, a radio presenter from Bristol, said: “It is a miracle we have all had transplants and are still here. We think about our donors every day.”

Naomi, Ingrid and Primrose suffered from polycystic kidney disease which causes extreme pain and eventually leads to the organs failing.

Recalling the moment her kidneys ruptured, Naomi, 74, said: “There was no warning. Blood suddenly started flowing down my nose.

"It was very frightening. The doctors said if it had happened while I was sleeping, I would have died. I have lost most of my family to kidney disease.

“My mother died when she was 40, my niece was 31. Five of my six brothers died young.”

Naomi had emergency surgery and started dialysis. On average, patients wait three years for a kidney transplant. But Naomi’s rare tissue type and a severe shortage of black organ donors meant she waited almost 14 years.

In that time she had 14 major operations, 23 minor surgeries and spent three days a week hooked up to a dialysis machine. Primrose says: “All those years on dialysis left Mum so weak.

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