Even now, when kidney transplantation has become routine, about 15% of transplant patients lose their new kidneys this way within a year of the operation.In this section Sound reasons to prevent kidney rejection The ne plus ultra of medicine The immaterial world ReprintsThe usual first sign of a rejection episode by which time it is well under way is the fact that the patient feels unwell.
If I do undergo transplant surgery, I know it will mean that someone in his or her darkest moments of loss has reached out to a stranger and offered them a future with the gift of their loved one's organs.
But even so, after six months of tests to ensure that my body was strong enough to cope with a transplant, it was still a shock to cross that line, to say: "Yes, if I get the chance, I'll swap my lungs for someone else's".
It's now seven years since Hütter and his team at the Charité hospital in Berlin performed a groundbreaking stem cell transplant on a 40 year old HIV-positive patient, suffering from leukaemia.
One problem that can follow transplant surgery is the unexpected reawakening of viruses that have lurked inactive in the patient or donor for years.
I have to keep my mobile phone with me at all times and stay within a four-hour drive from the transplant hospital, but days can go by when I barely give it a thought.
It is hearing stories about other transplant recipients that jolts me back into the knowledge that I too am now part of that select patient group.
But because of the shortage of organs, I'm actually more scared of how ill I will become before the transplant happens.
The test could bring about major benefits for organ transplant patients.
Quoting correspondence from Guy's, they say the proposed transplant offers patient "the best chance for rehabilitation and a normal life".
The lung transplant physician who remembers the intricate, non-medical details of his patients' lives because, in his own words, he has "journeyed with them for years".
