'Fluid restrictions were chronic'

Caroline Kennedy nearly went out of her mind watching ads for Lucozade or Bulmers while on dialysis.

"The fluid restrictions were absolutely chronic. You are not going to the toilet at all. So all you can take is 500mls a day. Two mugs of tea a day and you are finished. So it is really very very hard. I found that the hardest part," said the 43-year-old.

"You see people with a pint or a soft drink and you'd be saying: 'Oh my God.' You'd almost be fit to grab it."

Years of dialysis came to an end for Caroline last August with a successful kidney transplant. She used to make a 100-mile round trip from Tulsk, Co Roscommon, to Castlebar General Hospital three times a week.

She said the nurses there were wonderful but strict about the fluid limits. "If you don't keep to it you are continuously overloaded. If you have extra fluid in your body it's putting pressure on your heart so you are continuously weakening your heart."

The number of dialysis patients in Castlebar has "gone through the roof in the last year", she says. Now patients are bypassing Castlebar to go to Galway and some of them are travelling from Ballina and Achill.

One of the first differences she noticed after the transplant was changes in her skin. "It cleared up right after the transplant. Even though you are on dialysis it is still not the same as a kidney. It is not cleaning the blood the same as your kidney would, and so there are toxins in your blood."

To stop her body rejecting the kidney Caroline is on anti-rejection medication and some days could be taking up to 30 tablets a day. "I hate to have to take them and I am sure they effect the body but they are not making me sick at the moment."

Caroline's renal difficulties were traced to Lupus, an auto immune disease which affects the joints, skin and organs. This is her second transplant, the first in 1999 ending unsuccessfully when an artery in the donor kidney ruptured.