Holly Shaw, having been on dialysis for nearly four years finaly got a kidney transplant.
Holly is proud to be the North West advocate forLLTGL and wants to the most of her precious Gift of Life and continue raising awareness to help others as much as she possibly can.
Holly was a perfectly healthy teenager when suddenly, just after Christmas in 2004, she was taken ill and rushed into hospital. Various blood tests and injections took place and eventually a scan of her kidneys showed they had shrunk and were no longer doing the job they were supposed to. At this point, a shocked 17-year-old Holly was told she had End Stage Renal Failure (ESRF) and needed to go on dialysis immediately, which she would remain on for the foreseeable future until a suitable donor kidney was found for a transplant.
From then on, Holly required dialysis three times a week for three hours at a time and waited patiently for that phone call saying the transplant is going to take place. As well as dialysis, Holly has a strict fluid restriction of 500mls per day, a special diet and takes various tablets each day. The dialysis itself is restrictive, time-consuming and has unpleasant side-effects including low energy levels, tiring easily and almost constant nausea. Holly’s mum went through the tests to see if she could become a donor for her but she wasn’t suitable
In October 2008 the call finally came and Holly had her transplant ……
Holly is determined to use her new found freedom to promote the plight of others on the waiting list by encouraging more people to become organ donors. In October 2008, Holly became one of the campaigners in Channel Four’s initiative Battlefront – a project aimed at getting young people actively involved in campaigning about a cause in which they believe. Her campaign The Gift of Life has received much media attention and even praise from the PM himself.
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