25th August 8:25pm, I decided to make an early entry into the World. Now of course I don’t have any memories but from what my late Father told me – it is better I didn’t. I was born with 1 working kidney and it was in the WRONG part of my body. And some time later it was discovered it was diseased chronically – such a drab term but that was reality. What my family had to deal with must have been torrid.

So Life, this is the poker hand you wanted me to face from day 1?

Challenge 1 was to just survive and stay alive. Thanks to medical staff – I did and their intervention in the coming years was crucial and one of the integral reasons I’m helping them and other related charities to help others.

I was lucky that I grew up healthy the first few years but some early warning signs began to show – especially with such frequent heavy colds and involuntary incontinence…aka slightly peeing my pants without me even knowing awake and asleep. Ah yes this is a raw account and I have to be true. The number of appointments I had to cure my bed wetting issues when all along it was a dysfunctional pipe between my kidney and bladder!! They even made me stickers to put on a calendar when I did pee my pants…i kept saying i was’t holding it in but no-one made the discovery and possibly executed a major op early rather than in my teens. I know now where I would like to stick those stickers!!!

The sad fact was that the pipe was straight and this caused urine/urea to reflux (bounce back) to my kidney – causing continuous infections and the slight peeing my pants as a result!! And more importantly was damaging my kidney tiny bit by tiny bit.

As a child this was tough but i never questioned ‘why me’ and not all the children. I only did this once – when I was bed bound on my 13th Birthday during school holidays with 3 pipes coming out of my abdomen – this was the one time in my life I wanted to give up. My childhood was pretty special and loved it considering all that went on. I met a lot of sick kids whilst in hospital, most survived some didn’t, but what stood out was that they…and I just got on with it, It was scary for sure – but I think my Mum was more scared than I was. I had a fire inside knowing i was going to beat this and I felt it whilst at Great Ormond street at 11 years old after collapsing on Boxing day. I will come back to this on another blog.

With every blog i will always point to positives of every situation. Being born early meant I was born just before the School Year cut off point. I made some pretty special friends at school and rolling on the years i met my Wife at Uni in the same year as me. If I was born when I was due…we would not have met, got married and have the most amazing Son.

(Upcoming blogs include: 2 years in Africa, Why was I put in a kids special class?, Christmas Turned upside down, ‘You can’t play sports!’, The summer of ’89, God, religion & Indian culture smack-down,  You may need Dialysis, Medicine versus Mindset, The Arctic Challenge – plus many more)