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Hello, this is Health Check from the BBC.
I'm Claudia Hammond and today we're discovering what it's like to donate, wait for and receive a kidney.
More than a year ago, here on Health Check,
we received an email from newsreader Mike Powell, telling us about his diagnosis with kidney failure.
Since then,
you may have heard us following his journey on the show
while he waited for a new He did have a transplant and we thought a year on from then was a good time to catch up not just with Mike but with the donor who made it all possible.
And Mike was of course not alone in waiting for a kidney transplant.
The need is growing and waiting lists are getting longer.
Later on we'll hear from some of those waiting around the world and the doctor who's determined to do something about it.
But let's go back in time.
When I first spoke to Mike, he shared what it's like to find out you're not the healthy person you thought you were.
I'm always accused of being one of the worried well by my GP who always says,
you lot really get on my nerves because, you know, you're well, you don't need to have tests.
But every year I use a health assessment to try and find out how I'm doing and they discovered
that I had protein in my urine.
So that's a bit of an alarm bell.
So I got sent off for further tests, had some scans and they discovered that my kidneys were failing.
But I was told this was about a year ago that there was nothing to worry about and everything would be okay.