‘A gift to the whole family’

FROM searching for a movie to watch in the early hours of the morning at a holiday home in Portugal to being gowned up for theatre in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin for a kidney transplant, it was a blurry 12 hours for Tuam’s Mike Gilligan in 2017.

Mike’s family history of kidney disease only really made itself known when he was admitted to coronary care in 2008. From a young age Mike was aware that there were kidney problems in his family.

His paternal grandfather had died from kidney failure aged just 52. He has cousins with kidney issues. But it wasn’t until the doctors told him that the virus in his heart was a result of his very low kidney function that he paused and realised he was ill.

Read the full story in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald, on sale in shops and online www.tuamherald.ie