Michelle flies the flag for organ donation

Lifestyle – Michelle Moran received a kidney-pancreas transplant in 2014 having suffered kidney failure because of the Type 1 diabetes she’s had since childhood. Her journey isn’t over, but she’s hugely positive, as she tells Judy Murphy.

“The quality of your life depends on the happiness of your thoughts,” says Michelle Moran, a spontaneous woman who has been known to drive from her New Inn home to Belfast at the drop of a hat. She’s someone who thinks nothing of booking a holiday abroad the night before and flying the following day.

That’s because Michelle knows what it’s like to live a life that’s full of restrictions.

The Type 1 Diabetes she’s lived with since childhood led to her becoming temporarily blind when she was in her 20s and also caused kidney failure.

Eventually, after she received a double kidney-pancreas transplant and thought the worst was behind her, Michelle suffered severe bouts of sepsis, due to further complications from the diabetes. But this bright-eyed, warm, vivacious woman is an advert for positivity – and organ donation.

“If a scar tells a story, I could write a novel,” she says with a hearty laugh.

In August 1988, aged seven, Michelle was diagnosed with diabetes. Her pancreas didn’t produce enough insulin to regulate her blood sugar levels and from then, until she received her transplant at the age of 32, she was insulin-dependent. Three of her younger siblings also had diabetes but luckily for them, they didn’t go on to develop serious complications. For Michelle, these emerged in her 20s when her eyes and kidneys started to fail.

In 2008, she developed cataracts in both eyes which resulted in a total fogging of her vision. That lasted for six months, but her eyes have been perfect since ophthalmologist Dr Fiona Harney operated on her at UHG.

Michelle’s kidneys, meanwhile, were also compromised, putting her in danger of falling into a diabetic coma.

“Through blood tests in Merlin Park, they kept a close eye on me and I was working towards going on the [organ] transplant list from mid-to-late 2009.”

In May 2011, Michelle went on that list and started dialysis in August 2012. Her kidney function had gone downhill rapidly after she contracted pneumonia following a drenching at a David Guetta concert in Marlay Park, she explains.

She had dialysis three times weekly for four hours at a time in Merlin Park’s renal unit until January 2014, when she received a double-organ transplant, and cannot praise the staff in Galway highly enough.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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