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He has given blood 57 times, he is a volunteer driver for a local hospice, and now Nicholas Crace has scored a double first at the age of 83 – becoming the oldest living kidney donorin the UK and the oldest person ever to donate a kidney to a stranger.
The former charity director turned his thoughts to helping someone else in another way after his wife, Brigid, died last summer. "I cannot remember quite what put the idea of being a living kidney donor into my mind," said Crace, of Overton in Hampshire, "but in September 2011 I thought that it might be worth investigating. After all, I was in good health, had no dependants and had plenty of time at my disposal. I knew that 7,000 people are waiting for a kidney and that one person dies almost every day while waiting.
"I would have been very disappointed if I had been turned down. I was ideally placed to be a donor after the hospital had established that I was fit and had excellent kidneys. One can live perfectly happily with only one kidney – in fact some people are born with only one."
As he put it on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday, doctors discovered he had "Formula One kidneys" – good enough to have come from a 40-year-old.
Crace was aware of the difficulties faced by patients on dialysis – regular trips to hospital, a restricted diet and health problems. He said it was an easy decision to become a donor. "Giving a small part of me to someone else will make little difference to my life but a huge difference to someone else's. I was lucky to be in a position to help someone else less fortunate than myself."
Over a period of six months, he made 14 visits to Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth – a round trip of nearly 100 miles – for tests, checks and a three-hour operation to remove a kidney. Within three days of the operation he was back mowing the lawn and riding his bike.
Sam Dutta, the surgeon who performed the operation, said: "We know from numerous studies that a living-donor kidney performs better, works quicker and lasts longer than one from a deceased donor. All the detrimental factors related to being on dialysis are completely taken care of by a good functioning kidney. An altruistic donor coming forward is an amazing thing for us. The recipient just gets a new lease of life."
Crace is one of a rare breed – just 100 people in the UK have donated a kidney while living, for someone they are never likely to know.
Altruistic kidney donation by a living donor was first carried out in 2006. Altruistic donors were "very special people", said Annabel Ferriman, chair of the charity Give a Kidney – One's Enough. "They have the imagination to understand the suffering that people go through on dialysis while waiting for a transplant and the courage and generosity to do something about it."
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Professional dialysis recruitment
A new unit is to be located in the town after the East and North Herts NHS Trust – which currenly runs satellite dialysis units in Luton and St Albans as well as services at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage – was awarded contracts for two new units, one in Harlow and the other in Bedford.
