My mother gave me one of her kidneys — Stella Emmanuel

 
Stella Emmanuel knows she’s lucky to be alive. She used to be in perfect health before she was diagnosed with renal failure and was put on dialysis three times in a week. She finally had a transplant last year. Her mother gave her one of her kidneys.

With an MBA from IESE Business School, Navarra, Spain, Stella has 20 years experience in banking covering Corporate, Commercial and Retail banking as well as Internal Controls and Audit. Her previous jobs included: Head of Consumer Finance, First Bank of Nigeria Plc and Head, Lending, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria.

She is currently the Head, SME Products and Segments in Standard Chartered Bank. Her passion to impact positive change and her personal health challenges led her to set up the True Health Foundation which is aimed at helping the less privilege in the society with health conditions. Stella in this interview tells her story.

What is the True Health Foundation all about?
 

The True Health Foundation is not for those with perfect health conditions. It was basically aimed at helping the less privileged in our society with health conditions, and because we need to be able to measure our successes, I decided to focus on a segment of the society, which is pregnant women because we discovered that they suffer renal failure. Our choice to focus on renal failure was based on my personal experience, having had renal failure in the past.

What was your experience like?

There are actually two types of renal failure. There is the acute renal failure which can be reversed and then the chronic renal failure which means the kidney is totally gone and you have to be on dialysis for the rest of your life or you have a kidney transplant, which was my case until I got a donor last year.

It wasn’t a pleasant situation. I was a bit lucky having had a health insurance before then, but that didn’t cover all the cost. I had to sell lots of my personal assets to ensure that I remain alive. You need to be alive to own anything and because I had to go through all that experience, I realized that there are lots of people who would have died in the process. I really did meet people in the course of going for dialysis with various health issues and subsequently, they were not there anymore. Having gone through that, I decided that I had to do something.

How did you discover you had renal failure?

I remember in 2005 that I had this painful headache. It was very painful and I thought to myself that this is probably what people with migraine suffer. I went to see my doctor and after the check-up, they said that my blood pressure was unusually high and they needed to perform some investigation but I couldn’t stay because then I had a lot to do.

I went back to work and I found out that I was just not feeling well. I was usually out of breath and I felt I needed to exercise because at some point, I was putting on weight. But because I was constantly out of breath, I knew there was something wrong and I found out that in the morning, I would throw up and if I didn’t throw up in the morning before going to work, I would definitely throw up on the way to work and I knew I wasn’t pregnant and after some tests, they said my kidney has failed at that point.

Were these the major symptoms you had?

Basically what the kidney does for you is passing out excess fluid from the body and when the kidney is not functioning, you no longer pass urine or you pass in insufficient quantity. Then, you find out that your body is retaining more fluid than it should. The second function that the kidney does is to pass out impurities from the body and where those toxics are accumulating, you will throw up and you will feel sick all the time.

Do you have kids?

Yes I had a child last year.

How did you get a new kidney?

My mother gave me one of her kidneys.

Would you be able to do the same for someone else?

Well yes I would, but the thing is that right now I only have one kidney.

How is she your mum now?

She is very well. I think the mental trauma was too much for her, to see her daughter go through so much pain at that time and then, she was not looking well because of my health conditions. My illness was affecting her but now she is doing well.

Did your experience influence your decision to start a Foundation?

Certainly, my experience and seeing people die and knowing that they could be helped influenced me. We all know that ours is a country of great wealth and there is also the fact that people don’t know the enormity of the problem and so, I thought I could do my best to address the situation.

In what ways have the Foundation impacted lives?

We are going to come out with a series of events to create awareness; we need to have a platform to bring people together, like organizing a seminar to educate people on the issue of renal failure.We probably will not have many people attend but we can reach out to people through their areas of interests, like entertainment and fashion.

That is one of the reasons we are bringing one of America’s greatest music talents Chanty Moore to perform at a show that would be organised soon by the Foundation. She is also promoting women issues.

Again, the Foundation will have a membership where people will volunteer their time, not necessarily their money. Yes, we need the money but also people can come and help and administrate this department once a week or once a month. The most important thing for me is to get as much persons as possible involved in our project.

How have you been sourcing for funds?
We have received donations from friends and colleagues and we will be glad to receive more from kind hearted Nigerians.
By Yemisi Suleiman