A YOUNG York woman has told how she needs a third kidney transplant to get her life back on track.

Karyn McColl, 27, said she suffered kidney failure as a child because of an auto-immune disease but enjoyed healthy teenage years after her father Arthur gave her one of his kidneys when she was 11.

The transplant failed when she was 18 but her stepmother Susan was then found to be a suitable match and gave her one of her kidneys, which gave Karyn several more healthy years until it also failed when she was 24.

Now after three years of dialysis - the last year of which has involved four visits per week to the dialysis unit at York Hospital - she is appealing for more people to come forward to sign up to the organ donor register.

Karyn, who lives in Dalton Terrace, The Mount, said her mother Joan was tested to become her donor but her kidney function was not quite high enough.

York Press:

Her best friend, Adam Greenwood, of Castleford, had also agreed to be tested to see if his kidneys were a good enough match to become a third live donor.

“That’s an incredibly generous offer,” she said, but added that she may have to rely on an organ from a donor who had died.

She said she was speaking out today - World Kidney Day - to raise awareness of the impact of kidney disease but also to increase numbers on the register to help her and others who were suitable for a transplant, many of whom were not as lucky as she had been to receive kidneys from relatives.

“If just one person reading this article signs up - and equally importantly, tells their family that they want their organs to be made available for transplant in the event of their death - it will be worth my speaking out,” she said.

She said that after her second transplant, she had been able to work full-time and travel abroad, and had gone to live in Australia for a while.

But since she had had to go back on to dialysis, she had not been well enough to work, and travelling abroad to EU countries meant she would have to pay £200 for every dialysis session she needed. “It would make such a difference,” she said.

“If I had a successful transplant, I could work again, go on holiday abroad and travel, and I would love to be able to have a baby one day, but that isn’t possible when you’re on dialysis.”

She said about 35 patients received dialysis at York Hospital per day, with others going to units in Easingwold, Selby, Harrogate and Scarborough.

About 3,300 transplants took place in the UK every year but more than 5,200 were still waiting, and 64,000 people were being treated for kidney failure, she added.