‘Losing my donor has saved my life’

LINDA Joel hit rock bottom earlier this year when her husband Gary left her and took with him the kidney needed to keep her alive.

But the Abingdon mother of five now says losing her donor has saved her life.

The diabetic, 58, realised without the chance of an organ donation she had to lose weight and survive.

And after a gastric bypass operation to shrink her stomach in April, she is now looking forward to a brighter new year after shedding more than a third of her body weight.

She said: “I hit rock bottom and I did get really ill. But there was no turning back for me, it was either lose the weight and get healthy or die within a year.”

Mrs Joel, of Tower Close, has only one working kidney and suffers from heart problems.

The Oxford Mail reported in December 2009 how Mr Joel had pledged to donate the vital organ to his wife, and we reported again in March that the couple had split.

The couple had been together for nine years and were married in Abingdon in 2006.

Mrs Joel had the bypass operation at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford in April and has lost more than eight stone – going from 22 to about 13 stone.

She had to have daily injections for a month afterwards and could not eat solid food for 10 weeks.

She said: “It was really scary. The 10 weeks after I had the operation I just felt like digging a hole and disappearing.”

She is now following a strict diet and is banned from eating unhealthy food. Every day she will typically eat two spoonfuls of cereal for breakfast, a quarter of a tin of soup for lunch, and then a small plateful of food for dinner.

Mr Joel was in the same blood group as his wife, which meant the chance his kidney would be compatible was 70 per cent.

After the split he wrote her a note which read: “Linda, you and I have not been okay for a long time. I have felt the walls closing on me.

“I wish you and your family all the luck in the world but I’m not coming back.”

Last night, she said although she was heartbroken at the time, she was now glad to have broken up with Mr Joel, adding: “I haven’t seen or heard from him from that day.”

Mrs Joel used to be too embarrassed about her weight to exercise but now regularly goes walking and swimming.

The grandmother of 15 still needs a kidney and is on the NHS organ donor register.

But she said losing the weight had given her a lot more time before the situation became critical.

She added: “They told me if I had not lost the weight I would have been dead within six months.”

Mrs Joel, who is still single, said: “I am going to be living the rest of my life healthy and fit and I am going to be a fighter.

“Now I am looking for Mr Right.”

Her daughter Hayley Smith, 35, said the family had not expected her mum to live until Christmas.

She said: “Getting rid of him was the best thing that could have happened to her. You look at her now and she looks like a completely different person.

“We are all so proud of her.”