Kidney girl 'inspired' by transplant mum

Published on Friday 30 October 2009 21:21

A MORAY teenager diagnosed with kidney failure is being inspired by her mother's fight back to fitness after a life-saving transplant.

Six years ago Clare Mitchell, now 19, saw the transformation after her mother, Frances, 46, had a kidney transplant at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

The swimming pool lifeguard has now found herself on the waiting list for a donor after she, too, was diagnosed with problem kidneys.

Clare, of Hay Crescent, Keith, said: "Seeing what happened with my mum has made things a whole lot easier. She has just never looked back ever since she had the operation.

"She is just a different person altogether. Before the operation, my mum was constantly tired and suffering from back-ache. But now there's just no stopping her. She's a real inspiration to me."

Mrs Mitchell was one of the last kidney patients to undergo a transplant operation at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in 2003.

Clare then started suffering from pain and sore lumps in her feet. She said: "In March the doctors confirmed that I was suffering from kidney failure, just as mum had been. I was on steroids for a time and then I started dialysis in August."

Said Clare: "We have never been able to find out whether the kidney problems my mum and I have had are connected. My mum's kidneys were too small for them to do a biopsy.

"Mum reckons that I'm a lot more ill than she ever was. She said she would gladly give her kidney back and go through it all again to spare seeing me sick."

Clare has been on the transplant list since June and her father, Dougie, 44, a dairy worker, hopes he will be found to be a suitable donor.

Mrs Mitchell, a mother of three, is as a supervisor at the Baxters factory in Speyside. She said: "It's not easy watching Clare suffer. The last thing a mum wants to see is her children ill."

She added: "I've told her I would gladly go through it all again if she could be spared. But that's not going to happen. All we can do now is just get through this."