Hello there and welcome to the 2022 Kidney Donation episode of an Irish man abroad

because of course it is five years since I donated a kidney to my brother Adrian and you know

still today it's the scariest and best thing I've ever done it opened me up to a world I didn't know existed, introduced me to

all sorts of people, doctors, surgeons, nurses, campaigners, donors, recipients and just straight

up heroes I never would have known existed, or not for the fact that my big brother needed

a bit of help. It forced me, of course, to ask loads of questions of myself,

consider my family and the world and the way I interacted with it.

It just, it obviously changed me, changed my brother,

our friendship and how I view organ donation and community in general.

But as a direct result, I had the opportunity to write a one-man stand-up show about the

experience that I toured for an entire year to raise awareness and meet the people

affected by this issue across Ireland and the UK.

But to mark five years, I wanted to continue

that, at least for this week, specifically to put some energy that way, because I believe that

if donors like me don't talk, then more people suffer, people that are suffering unnecessarily, on waiting lists, on dialysis.

The more donors, like myself, who can talk and will talk, talk, then the better you can understand

from the outside why having a donor card and potentially live donating is something that isn't beyond the realms

of possibility. We have put together something very special here with this episode with the help of

my friends, Lucy Davis, Donald McCrae, Darren Cawley, James Nolan and more. And there is hopefully

something in here for everyone, regardless of whether you

are on a waiting list, living in hope, heading towards your donation day as a recipient or as a

donor, whether you're considering going and putting yourself forward or whether you don't

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