My kidney op: the devastating truth

[Karol]

My kidney op: the devastating truth
By VALERIE HANLEY
PUBLISHED: 23:01 EST, 10 November 2012 | UPDATED: 07:33 EST, 11 November 2012

Last month Joe Brolly gave a kidney to a man he barely knew. Tragically, the operation failed. But the kidney was NOT rejected: it had worked perfectly. In fact it was killed off by a tiny blood clot. And the worst of it? It could have been spotted by doctors...

All-Ireland footballer Joe Brolly today opens up for the first time about the agony of his failed kidney transplant donation. Last month the 43-year-old barrister and controversial GAA pundit made a massive sacrifice by donating a kidney to a father-of-three who, until 19 months ago, was a complete stranger to him.
The real tragedy, Joe reveals, is that recipient Shane Finnegan did not – as was widely and wrongly reported – reject the precious organ. Instead, the kidney failed because of a tiny blood clot that could have been easily dealt with had it been detected.

Left, Joe Brolly with Shane Finnegan in Guy¿s Hospital. Now Joe says he feels bereft, main picture
What’s more, Joe reveals, the clot would have been detected had exploratory surgery on Mr Finnegan gone ahead as planned, instead of being cancelled.
Joe does not blame the doctors, saying he has no recriminations. Never­theless, it can only have increased the former Derry star’s pain and frustration to know that his potentially life-threatening sacrifice was in vain in such ­circumstances.
The transplant was initially declared a success by experts at the world-renowned Guy’s Hospital in London – but within 24 hours of getting the all clear - five days after the complex operation - the first problems emerged.
Ten days after the transplant, Joe’s healthy organ was removed from Shane – leaving both men and their families bereft.

Joe says he now feels better
Yesterday, Joe said: ‘The head of transplant said, “Your kidney is working perfectly and we don’t expect there to be any problems.”
‘They’ve never lost a kidney in the last four years and the doctors were very confident. The euphoria of the operation succeeding meant that I was hardly even taking pain killers.
‘I was walking on air and we could see this future building. I could be walking around the rest of my life ­saying, “This fella is alive.” Shane has fought every minute for the past 20 years to stay alive and the thought was that he was going to lead a long and happy life, see his children grow to become adults, because of this very small gesture on my part.
‘The expectation here was that this would be a 15 to 20-year kidney and by that stage, given the pace of innovation, there would be no difficulties.
‘It was like Dorian Gray in reverse. Shane went from a grey, yellow complexion to a beautiful pink complexion.
‘I was euphoric. I could hardly feel any pain at all. It was a classic situation of the mind being stronger than the body. I was just basking in the success and you can imagine the ecstasy that was there.
‘I was unprepared for that euphoria. I dare say a heroin user might understand… literally there were waves of ecstasy. That’s from exhaustion.’
That euphoria, however, would soon be dashed. Just one day after doctors gave both men the all-clear, their high hopes began to unravel.
‘The next morning, the first problem arose and the first sign appeared that something had happened.
‘The blood results weren’t what they should have been and the doctors said, “Don’t worry – the kidney has gone to sleep. That’s common.”
‘The great shame of it all was that a day and a half after the problem had emerged, they got Shane ready for theatre to open him up and take a look – and then they decided against that.
‘If they had opened him up, they would have seen a clot in a vein leading to the kidney. It would have been a five-minute job. They could have done  an angiogram. It was an unforeseen complication and if it had been picked up earlier it would have been easy to deal with it. But there are no recriminations here. The doctors were aghast at what happened.
‘The kidney was doing well. There was no rejection and, in hindsight, it was a very simple thing.
‘The kidney was perfect but because of the clot at the tip of the kidney, the kidney was starved of oxygen and then it just shut down.’
After examining an ultrasound of the new organ, doctors eventually decided five days after problems first emerged to operate on Shane again. But by then it was too late and the donated organ could not be saved.
Joe was already at home in Belfast recovering from the operation when Shane’s wife phoned from London. It is a call that will haunt the Irish Mail on Sunday columnist until the end of his days – though he had a gut feeling something had gone wrong.
‘I felt when I left London, they hadn’t got on top of it. I knew in my heart of hearts it was all over,’ he said.
‘When Catherine rang from the hospital, she could barely talk. All of a sudden I was in agony, I kid you not. I was in such agony I had to be taken into Belfast City Hospital once that news came through.
‘I had stopped taking pain killers. But then I was really in serious pain. It was devastating. It was very agonising. It was so agonising because it was a perfectly healthy kidney.
‘When I gave the kidney to Shane and it had been a success, I thought, “This is the meaning of life.” So it’s very cruel obviously when that is taken away, particularly for Shane.
‘I was very deeply affected in the week or two afterwards. For me, it’s a deep, deep disappointment. It won’t go away. It will always be there. It’s like bereavement.
‘For me, I’m going to be able to get on and get back into the swing of things but for Shane it’s different. The clock is ticking and he needs a kidney from a live donor urgently.’
Joe says he is not religious, while Shane is a devout Catholic – yet both men had an unshakable faith that the transplant would succeed. The pundit readily admits he initially questioned the fairness of why things did not go as planned for a good-living person and daily communicant like Shane.
Now, almost a month later, both men are slowly but surely trying to deal with the situation – and Joe maintains he has no regrets whatsoever. He said he would willingly make the same decision again. Meanwhile, Shane has returned home from London and is back on dialysis. Despite being physically frail after losing a considerable amount of weight, Joe said his reserve of mental strength to cope remains undiminished.
‘When I went to see Shane, he was very, very weak,’ said Joe. ‘He was like a waif. He lost a couple of stone and he was very fragile. But Shane is armour plated. Mentally, he is a juggernaut and he is up and at it again. It’s time to get on now. ­Everybody has a sad story and it’s just the way things are.
You’ve got to accept disappointments, there it is.
‘It’s just a shame here because the stakes were so high. Everything was sitting pretty.’
Joe has been making steady progress himself on the road to recovery. The father of five has completed two 5km runs and he has set his sights on getting back on his bike soon.
He hopes to return to work as a barrister before Christmas and has already drafted a broad outline of a new organ-donor law that he wants to see introduced both sides of the border.
He has had detailed but informal discussions with senior political figures in Northern Ireland to change the law from an ‘opt-in’ to an ‘opt-out’ system, in which everyone is assumed to be an organ donor unless they have specifically ­chosen not to be.
At present there are 200 people in Northern Ireland and 600 more in the Republic waiting for a kidney.
Joe says he has been advised that the best way to ensure the new law becomes a reality is to secure cross-party political support for a Private Member’s Bill that could be brought before the Assembly and the Dáil.
During the next few weeks, he plans to travel to Dublin to have discussions with politicians.
Joe learned of Shane’s plight when the men found themselves coaching the same U-10 team in St Brigid’s Club in Belfast.
‘His son Pierce is in the same team as our Toirealach and his daughter Eve is on the same team as our Meabh,’ Joe said.
‘I knew Shane’s brother Donagh –he was a superb Gaelic footballer for Antrim.
‘I met Shane about a year ago but I didn’t know at that stage that he was one of those Finnegans,’ the top barrister said.
‘I knew he was sick and I said, “Look, I’ll give you a kidney.” I’m pretty straightforward. It just seemed to me to make sense.
‘It was a long shot. It was only when it became a possibility, this pioneering surgery in Guy’s, that the whole process became serious. There was a lot of sneaking around, going to hospitals.’
Former Derry county star Brolly explained how it was the death of his cousin that had inspired his extraordinary sacrifice.
‘I was very, very keen on it because last year, my cousin ­Catherine, who was a beautiful girl and was the same age as me and she married Danny Quinn, who played on the same Derry team as me, died,’ he said.
‘Danny is a very close friend of mine and Catherine, who was a lovely Irish dancer and all that, some years ago her lungs started to seize up and then, within the last two years, she had a lung transplant.
‘She had great love in her life. She had three children but looking in from the outside, her quality of life was very poor for very many years. Danny had to always carry an oxygen cylinder.
‘Then she had the transplant and the transplant was a success – and then within five or six weeks she died.
‘She was so beautiful… there wouldn’t be a day I don’t think of it.
‘It is still very devastating when you see the damage that it causes and the pain it causes too within the family.
Meanwhile, two people have agreed to be tested to see if they are matches for Shane and despite the disappointment of his own unsuccessful donation, Joe is more determined than ever to find a suitable donor for Shane. 
‘I don’t want Shane to die,’ he said. ‘Two people in particular appear to be very serious about it and they are going ahead with the testing.
‘And that will be great because if it doesn’t save Shane, it will save someone else. There’s nothing to stop anyone putting up their hand and offering to be a donor.
‘Anyone who is interested can contact me and I will speak and meet with them. There are a lot of people who are very frightened about being a living donor.
‘But kidney transplants are the most reliable and successful of all transplants. It is a given that it will change the recipient’s life but it will change the donor’s life forever. I could feel that in the first five days. There is so much to gain and so little to be afraid of.
‘A lot of people in their lives ask the age-old question, “What’s life all about, what’s the point of it?” People when they are going about their daily lives say, “What’s the point of this existence?”
‘Well, anybody who has donated will never ask that question again.’


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