After years of kidney failure and daily dialysis, transplant recipient and PhD candidate Kitty Ko shares how gratitude for her donor has become a lifelong purpose to speak up for those still waiting.
Around ten years ago, I received a phone call that changed everything: there was a kidney available for me.
The call came after seven and a half years of intensive peritoneal dialysis, a lifesaving but demanding treatment that was taking an increasing toll on my physical and emotional health.
Before that moment and the organ transplant that quickly followed, my life revolved around survival.
I was in my twenties, attempting to work full-time in the health sector – a job that I love – and studying part-time for my master’s degree. But every day was planned meticulously around my dialysis schedule: morning, lunch, in the evening, and before bed, often working exchanges into my lunch break or around cooking dinner.
To do this, a cleansing fluid flowed through a tube in my abdomen, to use the inner lining as a natural filter to remove waste from my blood. Eventually, I was waking at 3am to fit in five exchanges per day.
While it kept me alive, I wasn’t really living. I was exhausted, emotionally drained and swollen most days, sometimes struggling for breath due to fluid around my lungs. And I didn’t dare travel beyond Auckland, because I never wanted to risk missing the call.
When that call finally came and I woke up from surgery able to breathe again, it was with the sobering reality that while my joy and hope for life was flooding back, it was an incredibly sad time for the family of my deceased donor.
I think about my anonymous donor and their family often. The gratitude I feel is difficult to put into words, and so as someone who loves to stay busy, I express it mostly through action.
Kidney failure dominated my twenties and early thirties, limiting me, shaping my life, and ultimately redirecting me into the person and professional I am today.
Once recovered, I was clear that I wanted to use my experience to help others more than ever, not just as a survivor but as someone who could speak for those still waiting, and encourage those who may one day be able to help.
Today I’m in the fifth year of my PhD study, researching the experiences of women with kidney failure who are on the same dialysis as I was, many who are also waiting for a transplant.
My research focuses on how this affects every part of their lives, not just their physical health, but their relationships, work, mental and emotional wellbeing, and sense of self.
People can often grasp the medical side of kidney disease, but what they don’t always see is the human cost of living through it, often in limbo. Through my research, I’ve met women who have lost jobs, partners, or confidence, all while quietly fighting to stay alive, many while still trying to provide the best for their family and children. I want to help give a voice to their collective experience.
Turning gratitude into action
This time of year is special to me for two reasons. It’s nearing the anniversary of my life-changing call and recovery, and it’s also the time of year for Thank You Day. We just had it in late November and it’s where people across Aotearoa pause to express gratitude to donors, their families, and the teams who make transplantation possible.
For me, it’s a moment of reflection as well as a reminder of the power of gratitude to move us forward.
Personally, my gratitude motivates me to keep working, keep studying, keep being a voice for other women struggling with the impact of kidney disease, and especially, to keep encouraging others to talk about organ donation.
There are hundreds of others waiting now, just like I was. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends; people trying to live ordinary lives while doing extraordinary things to survive.
I know organ donation can be a difficult topic. No family wants to imagine the moment of losing a loved one, or living without them.
But I’ve also seen the other side of that immense loss and grief. My life, my studies, my ability to contribute, all of it exists because a family made that incredible choice in the hardest of times.
If there’s one thing I could ask for Christmas, it’s for every New Zealander to take a moment to have that conversation, to take action.
Consider your wishes, whatever they are, and talk to your whānau about what you would want if you were ever in a situation to donate. Also, ask and understand theirs.
You never know whose life that decision might touch.
