Nurse becomes donor I SAVED MY HUSBAND'S LIFE

Restoring his health with the precious gift of a kidney helped her relate to other patients’ transplant journeys

- Cloe Willetts

Last year, Kate Trethewey was lying on an operating table having her kidney removed in a transplant operation that saved her husband’s life. The mother-of-two knew first-hand the difference a transplant can make – over the past seven years, she has been involved in several organ retrieval procedures in her role as a theatre nurse at Christchurch Hospital.

“My husband Steve had a childhood kidney condition, but it wasn’t until a decade ago that we had to start thinking about the transplant side of things,” says Kate, 53, who lives in Sumner with airline pilot Steve, 56, and their sons Finn, 20, and Guy, 17.

Steve was born with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a rare kidney disease that affects the filters in the kidneys and leads to damage and failure. His condition wasn’t picked up until he went for a medical exam as a young man in the air force, and apart from high blood pressure and fatigue, he went for years without symptoms.

“They call FSGS the silent disease because it’s so gradual,” tells Kate, who had breast cancer six years before her live kidney transplant.

“We knew Steve would eventually fail his airline medical and he didn’t want a future of dialysis, which would mean being hooked to a machine for around five hours at a time to clean the toxins from his blood, like the kidneys are supposed to.”