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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grant_Vicat" data-source="post: 1874396" data-attributes="member: 388932">Hi [USER=473136]@SallyEzra[/USER] Yes, it is certainly still worthwhile, especially when I consider how my day used to start for at least 30 years. I would wake up, reach for the testing kit and then decide what to do about Insulin dosage and whether I was in a position to eat my breakfast at the usual time. I would test myself before driving a car and on bad days I would test up to 8 times if an infection had caused serious hyperglycaemia. All that, plus insulin injections, has gone, as has the worry about the possibility of violent swings in blood sugar. I was classed as a brittle diabetic from the start. As I mentioned yesterday, my kidneys started their long journey of decline 45 years ago. Five years later I started at King's College London as a student, and was therfore an outpatient (and inpatient) of one of the finest diabetes centres in the UK. Their treatment slowed the deterioration in kidney function right down. In 2000 I was referred to Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, who gave me 5 years before they thought dialysis would be necessary. From 2010 onwards I would keep getting gout in random places like the hands, the sternum, the elbow and, of course, the feet. These attacks became more frequent along with cellulitis, which is much more serious. It was this that made the Nephrology Department decide to put me on the transplant waiting list in 2012. Still no dialysis. I was booked to have peritoneal dialysis initiated on 22 August 2013. Only 8 days beforehand, this was rendered unnecessary, for which I am eternally grateful! Transplantation is certainly a tricky process, but it seems the pancreas is much more difficult, partly because a kidney is a much tougher organ, and also because the plumbing involved in a pancreas, especially as two arteries are involved and the tissue is much more delicate,  makes it harder to find an undamaged one that fits the tissue type, and also makes it more difficult to install. Funnily enough they don't take out the old organs, but they put a kidney exactly under the left side of a pair of briefs so that it joins the femoral artery, and the replacement pancreas is the same, but on the right side. It is weird being able to feel exactly where the kidney is - much bigger than I realised! Many thanks for your benevolent message!</blockquote>

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