WESTERN BUREAU:
AUGUST IS usually the time when many parents are concerned about school fees, books, uniforms, and other back to school preparations.
But for now, Nicola Pier-son's main concern is to find someone who will donate a kidney, so that she can live a normal life again. Nicola was diagnosed with kidney failure in September last year. The Gleaner spoke to Nicola in Negril recently, where she had travelled all the way from her home in Papine, St. Andrew, to sell tickets in the Kidney Support Foundation's raffle, to raise funds to help people like herself who are suffering from kidney failure. She leaned beside the prize, a year 2000 Volvo S80, as she told her story.
"I used to work at this place, and when I go to the bathroom and come back I have to climb up a step. When I come up the step I used to feel tired, but I thought it was because I was fat," she said.
One Saturday night in August of last year, Nicola had just returned home from a friend's wedding, when she started vomiting. "I couldn't stop vomiting but I thought it was something I ate.'
After vomiting for several days, she was finally taken to the University Hospital, where she did several tests. She was then transferred to the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), where more tests were done. There, she was told that she had developed kidney failure.
Kidney failure occurs when the kidneys cease their vital functions of removing excess fluids and impurities from the body. "I could not believe it when they tell me," said Nicola. "After that I just get weak, and I didn't have enough energy to carry out some basic functions." In March this year, she was referred to the Renal Unit at KPH. However, when Nicola visited the Renal Unit, she was told that she could not be accommodated as there was a long waiting list. The nurses told her to pray and that she did. She waited a few weeks and then returned to the Renal Unit, where she was finally admitted for treatment.
She now goes for dialysis treatment every Monday and Thursday. A dialysis machine acts as an artificial kidney, by removing excess fluids and impurities from the body, functions which the person with kidney failure can no longer achieve on his/her own.
"Things rough because me too sick to work. Sometime when me a go do dialysis me not even have bus fare," said Nicola. As she paused to sell tickets, she related that sometimes too, she does not have the $1000 it costs for each treatment. She praised the nurses at the Renal Unit who, she says, give her the treatment whether or not she has the money.
"I feel good to come and sell tickets for them, because I know that I will benefit," she said.
