Third chance at life: Woman faces dialysis again, hopes for transplant

2026-03-18 - 01:04

leeanna.maharaj@guardian.co.tt When 26-year-old Lorraine Ragbir visited the doctor for high blood pressure, kidney failure was the last diagnosis she expected. Ragbir, now 53 and working as a communications officer, recalled the moment she received the life-changing news. “So I’m there, 26 years old, sitting in a doctor’s office and she tells me I have three options: transplantation, which I only saw on TV; dialysis, which I had no clue about at the time; and death. And I was like, I’m 26. I have my whole life to live. I can’t die now,” she recalled. The Arima resident said she decided to embrace the diagnosis and make the most of her time. “I think one of the advantages of being diagnosed young is that you still have that spirit and fire in you. So I call myself fortunate in that instance, and I decided I was going to live a full life with renal failure,” she explained. However, Ragbir decided to seek a second opinion at a hospital in Canada, which she said gave her renewed hope. “When I reached Canada, they were like, oh, you have renal failure? Okay, this is what you have to do. I thought to myself that they’re treating this like I have a bruise on my knee, you know? They sat me down and explained everything,” she recounted. As she focused on treatment, her plans to pursue a master’s degree had to be placed on hold. “Every cent went into medical bills, transplantation, medicine, you name it. And my focus as well was not on studying. My focus was on getting better,” she shared. Members of her immediate family were tested to see if they could donate a kidney. Only one person turned out to be a match — the very woman who brought her into this world. “I was very fortunate. My mother had no issue. She said, if I’m the donor, let’s do it,” she said. Her mother, now approaching her 80th birthday, told Guardian Media it was not a difficult decision. “I had no choice but to say yes, because it would have been death,” Ragbir’s mother, Yvette Ragbir, said. After nearly two decades with her transplanted kidney, Ragbir once again faced kidney failure in 2017. “I remember when my kidney was failing. And the doctor said, you know, your kidney is failing? I said, no way. Not now. He goes, Lorraine, 20 years is long. You had like 10 extra years. I’m like, oh God, but I still want some more, you know. So it was a little sad, I would admit, knowing that that was happening. But again, I wasn’t going to let it stop me,” she reflected. Ragbir has since returned to dialysis. “I had to go back on dialysis. This time I’m on hemodialysis, no longer peritoneal. So I go to a clinic three times a week. People say, oh my gosh, you’re hooked up to a machine for four hours. I said, listen, when you go to the gym to get healthy, you go for four hours or more. This is my gym. You know, this is what I do. I go to my dialysis clinic and I go and I get cleaned out for four hours. And it’s just a change in my lifestyle. There are certain things I can do, and certain things I can’t do,” she explained. Ragbir acknowledged that another transplant would be ideal, but she noted that she is taking life one day at a time. “It will be nice if I can get another transplant. I will need to find a donor, but we would need to start testing, and it will be what they call an unrelated live transplant. So it’ll be a little trickier this time around, because when you do a related live transplant the matches are better. So with the unrelated, it’s a little tricky,” she said. Anyone wishing to donate a kidney to Lorraine Ragbir can contact her at (868) 303-9278.