It will usher in a new chapter for the Gunnedah woman whose life has been centred around the machine for more than five years.

Tracey received a new kidney on November 30 at Westmead Hospital after years of waiting. Her partner, Jason Rootes, was about to walk out the door to work when the long-anticipated call came.

“They rang me at ten to five that morning and then we drove to Sydney,” Tracey said.

“It was just before 9 at night before I went into theatre.”

While Tracey gained a kidney, she lost a toe, which had been affected by her diabetes.

“They also amputated a toe. The toe was a bit yuck looking. They could have just not done the transplant but because it was such a good match they said, ‘You’re probably going to lose a toe through this’,” she said.

“They did the kidney and then the vascular team came in and they removed the toe.”

Tracey was also in need of a new pancreas but ended up receiving pancreatic islets instead, 24 hours after her kidney transplant. She stayed at Westmead for six weeks.

“For a donor to give a pancreas, they have to be under the age of 45, so I’m presuming this donor was over this age so they couldn't use the full pancreas,” she said.

“What they do is take the pancreas and mush it up and they remove the islets, which are the insulin-producing cells, and then they have to cultivate them… and they inject the islets into the portal veins of your liver and that helps your body produce its own insulin if it takes. I’m still diabetic but my body is producing its own insulin… but it’s not producing enough for me to not be on insulin.

“My body is producing red blood cells again, which is great.”

Tracey said the doctors decided on this course instead of waiting for a donor who could provide both a kidney and pancreas because it was difficult to find a good match.

“I’ve got a lot of different antibodies in my blood, which is why it’s taken me so long to get a kidney,” she said.

“I had to wait for a donor that had similar antibodies in their blood.”

This is Tracey’s second kidney and pancreas transplant. She received the her first set of organs in 2004 after her first pregnancy brought on renal failure. She got eight years out of the kidney and ten years out of the pancreas before they were removed, then she went onto the organ transplant waiting list in 2014.  

Without a functioning kidney, Tracey had to go onto dialysis and every second day, she would spend more than eight hours setting up, sterilising and using the machine.

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For five of these eight hours, she had to be hooked up to the machine, which takes on some of the functions of a kidney, cleansing the blood. In these five hours, she was limited by the short reach of the machine and said she spent a lot of time online and watching television. 

“From the time I turned it on, to the time I started the actual treatment was two hours, and then I was on for five and then it would take a bit over an hour at the end for the heat cycle for the cleaning of the machine,” she said.

“At the end, you’re holding off the needles as well, so it would take about half an hour for my arm to stop bleeding, taking the needles out. Each needle would take about ten minutes to stop bleeding.”

If Jason was at work she usually started the dialysis in the afternoon because there wasn’t enough time between school pick-up and drop-off for her two children.

“It would be midnight before I’d finish and that’s if I didn’t have to take Abby to work as well, so I had to fit in around the kids and what they did,” she said.

“I really don’t know how I ever had the time.

“Dialysis is hard work and it changes your life.

“It’s not just me who’s affected by it.”

Tracey said she spent a lot of time at home because it was difficult to go away. She would have to plan well in advance and book into a dialysis clinic nearby or come home in time to dialyse.

“If we wanted to go away, I’d dialyse in the morning from midnight and then we’d go at 8:30, 9 o’clock in the morning, have that night, have the next day, have the next night, we’d have breakfast and then we’d come home so I could dialyse again,” she said.

“Food was a big thing. With dialysis you’re restricted with your foods that contain potassium and you had to cut down a lot on your protein,” she said.

“Now I have to eat more of your proteins, your red meats. I can actually eat bananas now. I hadn’t had a banana for nearly five years until I’d had this transplant. You take it for granted.

“And trying to drink three litres of fluid a day now as opposed to 800mL is a really hard change.”

Now that Tracey is no longer reliant on the machine, she can have that second coffee she has been missing and go to bed whenever she likes.

“I can actually go to bed at 9.30 at night – I don’t have to sit around until midnight to do dialysis,” she said.

“It’s nice to know I don’t have to sit around and be relying on that machine.”

One of the most welcome changes has been the ability to go away, with the family already squeezing in four days in late January.

“We’re just trying to make up for the kids not having holidays and trying to get them away a little bit now,” she said.

“I’m taking the kids camping at Easter.”

Tracey is still having her bloods taken twice a week and sees her specialist in Tamworth fortnightly. She will travel to Sydney this week for a week-long three-monthly check-up.

After giving up work in 2015 due to seizures, she said she would like to go back to hairdressing at Rosa Leopardo.

“I’ve hated not working,” she said.

“Work was my social outing, basically, so you sort of lose that contact with adults and getting back into that is hard too.

“I just keep telling Soph now, ‘I’ll just turn up one day and start to work’.

“It’s up to when I’m ready.”

She said the best feeling was having freedom.

“It’s almost like dialysis has never happened because I’ve just come back into normal life again,” she said.

“It’s just the little things, just knowing we can go and do stuff and not having the phone on me**. I don’t have to worry about that phone call any more.

“Each day is a new day.”