Mum donates kidney to son to keep him alive

Aug 1 2009 By Alison Dayani

NOTHING was going to stop Liam Hill pulling himself out of his hospital bed and shuffling each slow step, dragging his drip, to nestle by the side of the woman two beds away.

Just hours earlier the 17 year-old had been under the knife getting a new kidney, but the only thing he wanted now was to watch protectively over his mum, Sharon, lying dazed and bleary-eyed.

Opening her eyes, the 41-year-old mum-of-three exchanged a relieved look with Liam that needed no words – one of her kidneys was safely working inside his teenage body and everything was going to be OK.

All that Sharon hoped and dreamed for Liam could now come true.

He would be able to have a pint on his 18th birthday, eat pizza and chocolate whenever he liked, work towards his ideal job as a sports trainer – and, most importantly, not have his life defined or limited by dialysis and kidney failure.

It is just two weeks since Sharon and Liam went under the knife at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Mum and son are now back at home in their semi-detached home in Alvechurch, Worcestershire.

And they both say they feel as though the amazing kidney swap never even happened.

“I had to go for it for Liam’s sake and never thought twice,” says Sharon, who works as a child-minder.

“I had resigned myself to thinking that it would be 48 hours of hell and after that it would all be worth it, but it wasn’t even that bad.

“My husband Shawn endured the worst of it, having to watch us both being wheeled away into theatre, me first and then Liam two hours later, worried sick the whole time.

“It is bad enough seeing Liam being taken away for an operation, but to have your wife and son both go under the knife at the same time is awful.

“There was a point where I was brought out of theatre as Liam was being taken in, when we were supposed to be able to see each other as our trolleys passed by and speak.

“But I was still dazed from an epidural and anaesthetic and Liam was on morphine, so neither of us noticed.”

Shawn, a former soldier, had just returned from The Gulf when Sharon became pregnant with Liam.