My name is Katie and here’s a little about why I’m running the London Marathon for Kidney Care UK.

I suffer with a condition called Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). Effectively this means that I have cysts which grow on my kidneys and over time this reduces their function. This is a hereditary condition, and something my dad also suffers with.

In some cases, people with PKD may end up with kidney failure, requiring dialysis and a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, this is the case with my dad, who started dialysis in 2018.

For those who don’t know much about dialysis, what this looks like for my dad is attending hospital 3 times per week, where he is hooked up to a dialysis machine, which cleans his blood for roughly 5 hours each visit. It’s incredible what these machines can do, though this has been a huge life adjustment for him. He also then underwent surgery to remove one of the polycystic kidneys (which weighed 8lbs – not to mention he still has one polycystic kidney weighing the same or more).

We were fortunate that my sister did not inherit this condition and so in 2020 she was able to donate a kidney to my dad, and though recovery was tremendously tough, resulting in multiple hospital stays and my dad needing to be on a feeding tube for over 8 months, once he had fully recovered this truly gave him his life back. We were able to go on holiday, his health improved tenfold, and he appreciated the time he’d been given back, no longer needing to attend dialysis sessions.

It was therefore devastating in August 2022 when, after a period of not hearing from my dad for over 24hrs, we found him unconscious in his house after a fall with his new kidney beginning to reject.

It is a sad fact that rejection happens in around 10 to 15 of every 100 patients in the first year after a kidney transplant and unfortunately this was the case for my dad. After a week in the intensive care unit, and over a month in hospital, my dad recovered from the trauma of his incident and was discharged from hospital and back on dialysis.

My dad lives on dialysis today, and though it can be tough, anyone who knows him knows how optimistic and positive he is, grateful for everyday on this earth. As for me, I will also need a kidney transplant in the coming years and so this year I wanted to physically challenge myself and my body, not taking for granted the health I have today.

And so that takes me to why I’m running the London Marathon. This will be an enormous challenge for me, having only started running in January this year. I completed my first half marathon in August and couldn’t miss the opportunity to run such an iconic event, for such an incredible cause, so close to my heart (and kidneys :)).

Thank you for reading my story and if you can, please donate anything you're able to, with all funds going to Kidney Care UK, a fantastic organisation supporting people across the UK who are living with kidney disease.