Pagham woman faces nine hours of dialysis a day

Pagham resident Pam, 50, spends nine hours a night on a dialysis machine just to stay alive.

She has taken part in a national campaign to raise awareness of the matter and urged Observer readers to become organ donors to help those who suffer from kidney failure.

She said: “It’s devastating to be told you have got kidney failure at such a young age.

“I have to allow myself nine hours every night to be strapped to the dialysis machine. I have been doing it for five months.

“But that is not curing me. It’s just keeping me alive.

“The only way I will be able to live a normal life is by having a kidney transplanted into me.”

She added: “I don’t think people know much about it until they have someone in a position who is waiting to have a transplant.

“It’s very frustrating to know people don’t sign up to become donors.

“It’s just through a lack of education and laziness that people just have not got round to it.”

Pam is among 7,000 people in Britain waiting for a kidney transplant.

Of them, 300 die every year while others join the list.

Life changed dramatically for mother-of-two Pam, of Bishops Close, last year when her kidneys stopped without warning.

“My son found me collapsed at home one day,” she said. “I was an hour away from dying and I spent three weeks in a coma in hospital.

“No-one knows why my kidneys have failed.”

Her kidney failure meant Pam had to leave her full-time administrative job.

“Having this condition has affected every aspect of my life,” she said. “Neither of my children are compatible to give me a kidney.

“That happens in so many families.”

Pam will be at Chichester College after the Easter holiday to talk to its students about her condition.