Transplant recipient Ian Miller has dedicated his recent bowls championship to the devoted team of renal specialists who gave him a new life.
Ian claimed Henley Bowling Club’s Singles Championship in a thrilling contest in January – five years after experiencing renal failure and five years since his last title.
After receiving a kidney transplant in June 2021, Ian said he’s “forever grateful” that he’s been given a second life.
“I was a very fortunate person with a rare blood group, and I got lucky with a good kidney as well,” he said.
In 2019, Ian was on the Gold Coast for the Australian Bowls Open when his kidneys gave out.
His type 2 diabetes had been slowly eating away at his kidneys, and doctors had been monitoring their function since 2014.
Ian Miller with runner-up Jeff Marsh.
But over a two-week period, the level of creatinine (a waste product found in the blood) in Ian’s kidneys had blown out from 600 to 1,400.
“We decided to go to dialysis there and then,” he said.
For the next two years Ian would head to the Royal Adelaide Hospital three times a week for dialysis, spending about five hours hooked to the machine to wash his blood of excess water and toxins.
Placed on the waitlist for a new kidney, it took two false alarms before Ian finally got the call in June 2021.
Throughout the whole ordeal Ian was never away from the green, but it has taken him three years to return to the level he was at before.
“I always said that if I got through the transplant and it was successful, if I ever got back to 80% of what I was prior, then I would be very happy,” he said.
“I would say we’re getting close to that now I’ve won a Championship against some very good bowlers. It’s taken three-and-a-half years, but I guess good things you don’t rush.”
Ian has a family history of diabetes and his late father also had renal failure following a heart attack, so he had some idea of what the road ahead was going to look like.
Following his five-year journey back from the brink, Ian praised his medical teams for helping him bounce back, particularly his surgeon Professor Stephen McDonald and Professor Toby Coates, Director of Transplantation at the RAH.
“I am very proud of them, it’s my medical teams that have given me this opportunity again,” he said.
“I even said before I went out to the final the week before, win or lose I am basically a winner because I am back where I want to be.”
