Kidney disease sufferer said she was not given specific warnings about the risk of getting cancer as a direct result of surgery
Gillian Smart was diagnosed with diabetes 30 years ago, but it was a bout of flu in October 2008 that caused doctors to raise concerns about her kidney function. Weeks of hospital treatment and assessments led to her being on dialysis from June 2009 and in May last year she went on the transplant waiting list.
Members of her family and friends offered to be live donors and the 46-year-old mother was told her sister Lynne, 50, was an "incredibly close" match.
Yet in the early morning of 26 November, she – like Robert Law, the other patient in this case – was called to hospital for a transplant. Later that day she preceded Law into the operating theatre.
Smart said she was not given specific warnings about the risk of getting cancer as a direct result of surgery.
"When I became a renal patient, I was given a list of literature that the hospital approved of, as the internet can give such conflicting and inaccurate advice," she said. No mention was made in this literature of the possibility of receiving a cancerous kidney.
"As a renal patient, I knew that if I developed cancer at any stage I would be removed from the waiting list and would not receive a kidney from either family or waiting list until that cancer was cured and I had been cancer-free for two years."
She was, she said, told the "normal things" when she was asked to sign her consent. "You could die on the table, the kidney might not work, it might work a week, a month, and then fail. You could get an infection."
Perhaps, she said, she should have done more research. "But a transplant was something that might never happen. There could have been a hitch. It is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You don't want something too much or you won't get it."
On the Thursday following the operation – the day she and her husband, Paul, were told about the possible cancer – Smart had "felt fantastic. The kidney was slow to kick in, but we were not worried, the staff were not worried. I had not had that energy for six months."
But the surgeon told them an autopsy four days after her operation found the donor had cancer, although tests were needed to establish what sort. Treatment options were outlined then and later, after the lymphoma was found.
"My heart sank. It was like I was in a scene from TV or a film. You think, come on. It has got to be the biggest joke going.
"This was my get out of jail card. This was where my life could start again. Now I think, goodness. I may have many years of fighting a potentially fatal illness.
"I committed to keeping the kidney because I knew I could not go back to dialysis and fight cancer at the same time."
She added: "I should have been made aware of this danger. I was not critically ill. I had a living donor available to me and if I had received an informed and full account of the danger, I then could have made a informed and full decision in accepting the kidney or not."
Now she wishes she was back on dialysis. "I feel atrocious now. I am a positive person but it gets harder and harder to think positively. I have to for the family. I have two teenage children: Lauren, who is 17, and Lewis, who is 13."
She, like Law, has had four cycles of R-chop chemotherapy and the fifth starts on Thursday. The experience has coincided with other problems and they have had to sell their "dream home" and move into social housing. .
"We will have tests after the sixth session [of drugs]. The cancer could be totally gone and that would be great. But I can't think about it until then. It does not bear thinking about."