By John Anderson

I'm 68 years old and I am learning to live all over again.

I have polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and over the years the disease had destroyed my kidney function to the point that in 1999 I entered end stage renal disease. In early 2000, I had a nephrectomy to remove one of my diseased kidneys and immediately started hemodialysis. Dialysis was not the direction I wanted to follow, so I immediately started preparing for a transplant.

All four of my children and my wife wanted to be tested as potential donors. All five passed the initial testing. At that point, my wife of 41 years took charge. Carole let it be known that the children had their own lives to pursue and that she considered it her job to be my donor. No one knows how big of a gift this represents. Carole does not like pain and the thought of being operated on was not very appealing to her, but she never wavered in her commitment to giving me my life back.

To make a long story short, on July 25, 2000, one day after my 62nd birthday, I was given a wonderful opportunity for a second chance at life courtesy of the love of a wonderful woman.

We must have been a funny sight
Even before I started the recovery process, I realized that exercise and physical activity would have an important role in my life after transplantation. I felt that exercise would help my recovery and would generally improve the quality of my life. Within two weeks of returning home, both Carole and I were walking to the corner of our block and back. We must have been a funny sight, me in my surgical mask and both of us hunched over and hobbling along. We made these treks in the early evening both because it was cooler and there were fewer people to run into. Within one month, we had increased both the pace and the distance of our walks. We were now going a mile and a quarter at a reasonable pace.

This exercise was obviously good for both of us, and I could tell that I was getting better quickly with the additional effort. However, I am a goal-oriented person and there was very little about walking around in circles that met this need or that would necessarily keep me engaged with exercise for an extended period of time. I felt I needed to be working toward an objective. At this point, I discovered a perfect answer: The Transplant Games. This is a competition for all people with transplants that is held biannually in two formats. On even-numbered years, the US Transplant Games are held in different locations throughout the United States. On odd-numbered years, the World Transplant Games are held at different locations throughout the world.

With a competition goal, it not only became easier to work out, but I could also exercise on a planned program to properly prepare me for my specific competitions. After obtaining clearance from my transplant team — my standard procedure before changing my routine — my evening walks quickly expanded into power-walking, weight training, running, throwing, shooting and golf. This obviously improved the quality of my exercise and further helped my recovery. In September 2001, just a little over a year after the transplant, I competed in a local transplant competition in Texas.

Since then, I have been fortunate enough to compete in local Senior Games and the US and World Transplant Games in golf, the shot-put throw, the 1500-meter walk, the 400-meter run, the 100-meter run, the long jump, the discus throw, the softball throw, the javelin throw, volleyball and target shooting. I have won medals in some of the events but that is not what the competition is all about. Besides providing additional incentive for the exercise routine, the Games provide an opportunity to demonstrate how effectively people with transplants can return to a normal life and to show potential organ donors that their gifts of life are used to improve other lives. We need to provide additional organs to help the over 95,000 people currently on the US transplant waiting list. The Games also help create a strong sense of community. Participants get a chance to meet other transplant recipients as well as athletes and even donors.