On New Year’s Eve last year I wrote about how life came full circle for me and I experienced the privilege of taking care of a kidney donor, my sister-in-law Gayatri. It has been nearly four months since the kidney transplant took place and by the grace of God, both recipient and donor are doing very well.

As with any other donor, Gayatri too had a lot of questions around post-surgical recovery, what precautions she would need to take and so on. She also had one of the most unique questions that anyone in her position would have asked – “How soon can I play sports again?”

You see, since a few years now, Gayatri has been an inspiration for another reason as well. Since almost a decade now, Gayatri has been playing badminton and pool regularly. She also picked up many other talents over this time, including dancing and playing the violin. About five years ago, she began to hone her badminton skills and turned it into a fitness regime. As her flexibility and reflexes improved, she added cricket to the mix one and a half years back.

For her family and friends, it has been super inspiring to see her journey towards becoming a sportsperson well into her fifties. Her grit and determination to succeed in these disciplines is reflected by the many awards and certificates she has received over these past few years, that honor and recognize her accomplishments.

One can then imagine her concern at potentially losing the ability to play these sports and be able to pursue her passion post kidney donor surgery. The transplant team took her concerns seriously and explained that she would need to take it easy for an entire month, but post that she could slowly retrain her body to transition from recovery mode, back into normal life. The doctors were confident she would be back on the badminton court and the cricket ground within three months.

While the initial weeks post surgery were painful and would have created some doubt in Gayatri’s mind if she would ever see a sports ground again, as predicted by the doctors, she was able to move around much better within a month. With the support and encouragement of her personal trainer, she slowly started physiotherapy in the form of simple exercises to restore flexibility and comfortable movements that would enable her to resume her passion.

In a few very short months, I’m happy and proud to report Gayatri has made a full recovery and received a hero’s welcome back on her beloved cricket ground.

Since then, she has not looked back. Be it pool, badminton or cricket (or anything else that interests her in future), she is pursuing her passions with an energy and determination that is an inspiration to all who know her.

There couldn’t be a better time for this positive message to go out into the world either, and I’m honored to be the one who gets to write about it, and celebrate yet another angel on earth who has given someone, quite literally, the gift of life. World Kidney Day is observed every year in March, on the second Thursday of the month. This year, World Kidney Day fell on 14th March. As the website states, the mission of World Kidney Day is to “raise awareness of the importance of our kidneys to our overall health and to reduce the frequency and impact of kidney disease and its associated health problems worldwide.”

The campaign promotes a theme every year, and this year’s theme is “Advancing equitable access to care and optimal medication practice.” I invite everyone to visit the official website and see how best each one of us can improve our awareness and spread the word around kidney health awareness.

Every year around this time, many healthcare institutions organize a special day to felicitate the many donors who volunteer to undergo surgery and the painful recovery that follows to give their loved ones another chance at life. Next week, Gayatri will also be similarly honored along with many others like her who find the inner strength to sacrifice their own flesh to save others. More on that in another blog soon!

For those in the same position as Gayatri was a few months ago, worried if she would be able to continue pursuing her interests and resume a normal life, I hope this story of her recovery and subsequent accomplishments gives you some more confidence and faith in what is understandably one of the toughest decisions you would make in life. If even one person in the world is inspired by her journey to undertake their own journey to becoming a donor, I would consider my work done.