It took more than 12 days for his daughter's body to accept his donated kidney, but the wait was well worth it for this father. Theresa Judge reports.
Donal Fenton says doctors had clearly explained to him the risks of donating a kidney to his three-year-old daughter Aimee.
"I'd never been in hospital a day in my life. It certainly clears the mind - the things that were bothering you a couple of days beforehand, suddenly they didn't seem as serious as you thought they were," he says. "But if you can't do it for your own, you can't do it for anybody."
He saw it as a chance to give Aimee a normal life before she reached school-going age. Aimee had to start kidney dialysis within days of her birth in June 2002. During those first two to three days, Donal and Aimee's mother, Michele, were told there was very little chance she would survive. Aimee had been born with no right kidney and only 15 per cent of her left kidney. When she returned to the family home in Ladysbridge in Co Cork, she was the smallest baby in the country on dialysis.
Aimee was one of only two people to undergo a living kidney transplant in the Republic last year. Until then, she was on dialysis six days a week for 11 hours a day and she also had to be tube-fed. She had two tubes inserted into her - one for feeding and the other for dialysis.
Michele remembers sitting with Aimee in Temple Street hospital in Dublin last July preparing her for the surgery and getting a message on her mobile phone from doctors at Beaumont Hospital saying that Donal's kidney would be there within minutes.
"At least then I knew Donal was alright and I could concentrate on what was happening at Temple Street," she says.
For 12 days after the operation the couple didn't know if the kidney was going to work. After transplants it is normal for some days to elapse before a kidney "wakes up". As the days passed, Aimee's condition deteriorated. "The two of us thought at the time we had made the biggest mistake, that we should have left her on the list [for an organ from a deceased person]," says Michele.
Ironically, Aimee's recovery began only after a very serious deterioration. Donal explains: "One night in the ward, her blood pressure dropped, her heart beat dropped and the next thing I knew there was alarm bells going off and doctors ran in from all over the place, there were seven doctors working on her at one stage."
It was the shock to her system that helped to kickstart the kidney. "We had been told not to get our hopes up, that a 12-day delay was practically unheard of," says Donal.
That day at the end of last July proved a turning point for Aimee. Now the couple just marvel at the wonder of seeing their only child live an ordinary life. "I can't find words to describe what it's like to watch her eat - just to see her put food into her mouth, and eat it and enjoy it, and want more," says Michele.
"Before she didn't have the energy to keep going and she would get frustrated. Now she's continuously going from half seven in the morning to half seven or eight at night - it's great."
There are no more feeding tubes. "Now if we're out she can sit up and have a slice of pizza or whatever she wants," says Donal, who praises the support they got from family, friends and his colleagues in AIB in Cork. The couple insist on thanking all the doctors involved in the care of Aimee. "People criticise the health service, but there's a lot of success stories as well, and they are unbelievable people," says Donal.