Just to answer re: the op!

A number of people keep asking this, so I thought I'd explain. The operation is to give me a new kidney, but they don't take the native kidney(s) out, they just add a third one in another part of the body! The operation to remove a kidney is quite a big one, so they don't take out the recipient's native kidneys unless they are infected and causing other problems.

The donor kidney is inserted into the abdominal cavity, just above my groin. See the diagram below:


Apparently afterwards, you can feel it there(!!) It's deep enough into the body to be safe, but not safe enough that you can do major contact sport or anything really. As it's quite shallow compared to the native kidneys, they can also easily do biopsies on it if I have a rejection episode.

In most kidney disease patients, the native kidney simply shrivel up when they stop working. Mine (because I have PKD) may carry on expanding - they are already 3-4 times normal size. Normally a kidney is about the size of your fist, but mine are around 25cm long each, apparently. They are actually quite uncomfortable, but I've kinda got used to it, so if in the future they keep getting infected then I may ask them to operate on me again to take the native kidneys out.