Jimmy Dolan was walking in town with his parents one day when he suddenly felt terribly unwell.
The then-27-year-old from Knocknacarra had abdominal pains and his nose started to bleed. He went straight to Westdoc, who advised him to immediately attend the emergency department.
Within a few hours, he was transferred to the intensive care unit where medics were at a loss to explain his condition.
They decided to put him on dialysis to remove whatever toxins were causing his white blood cells to attack his organs. He was eventually diagnosed with vasculitis, the term given to a group of rare diseases which result in inflammation of the blood vessels.
On his release from hospital, he had to continue with dialysis three times a week.
He continued to live his life as best he could, even changing jobs from Galway to Cork where he could do the four hours of dialysis when he finished work in order to hold down a job.
He was put on the kidney transplant waiting list but was advised that he could be facing a wait of six years or more, rather than the usual two to three years, because he was blood type O.
Last October things came to a head when he collapsed at work.
His brother Ger, who was also working in Cork, came to see him in Cork University Hospital.
“His blood pressure had gone through the floor. When I saw him sitting up on the chair he could have been dead. He was pure white. I had never seen him look so bad. It scared me. It scared all of us. I told him I was thinking about getting tested and he told me no way. He was allergic to the idea,” recalls Ger.
Ger, 26, was working as a firefighter in Cork for nearly four years. One of his colleagues had a son with a rare kidney condition who was having a kidney donated by his brother-in-law.
“I asked him all about it and got the number of the kidney transplant coordinator in Beaumont Hospital. I got an appointment and went up and got a lot of blood tests. It came back that I was a 6/6 match – it’s called a full house and it’s like winning the lotto, even some identical twins don’t match that closely.”
For the rest of this story, see this week’s Connacht Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.
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