Retired teacher's remarkable recovery after kidney transplant and meningitis

As soon as you get chatting with retired Ballyshannon and Bundoran secondary school teacher Ray McGough you can feel the pure joy in his voice. 

And that is no coincidence, for just over a month ago, his health was facing imminent decline as he was about to start kidney dialysis. 

And not for the first time was he in fear of a life threatening illness, having previously been on life support for three months after contracting meningitis back in 2004!

But a kidney transplant, just over a month ago, on January 16 at City Hospital in Belfast has remarkably changed all that for the Belleek man.

And one of the reasons he has decided to talk about his experience, is to tell people of about some of the amazing positive stories that also regularly emanate from hospitals, through the work of amazing doctors, nurses and staff.    

Ray had taught for 18 years at the old Ballyshannon Vocational School, later transferring to the then new vocational school in Bundoran, where he was to become Deputy Principal at Magh Ene College.

“I am on top of the world, I have won the lotto, actually it is better than winning the lotto,” he gleefully told the paper this week.

“It all happened very suddenly. I wasn’t on the transplant list at all. 

“I was so poorly in the Autumn time there. I have a consultant up there in Omagh, Dr Moran. 

Ray pictured in his beautiful garden this week. Photo: Thomas Gallagher

“I told him that I have no energy and I am going around like a zombie. I said ‘can you help me?’; he took me in and gave me a transfusion of iron. Now I wouldn’t be climbing Benbulben, but it helped.       

“So my kidney function was down at 12%. And it had been like that for the previous ten months. I had a fistula in for dialysis, which I was about to start.

“But that is a good thing as I hadn’t started it and that was a good thing. It is better to get a kidney before going on dialysis.Dialysis is very severe on the body. 

It is three times a week for four hours. You are wrecked after it for a few hours and then you pep up for a day and then you are down again. And then you have the next round.

Chronic fatigue

“Before I had the transplant I was suffering chronic fatigue, incontinence, up all night at the toilet every half hour, wearing pads all day, restricted renal diet, weighing pout protein, couldn’t eat processed food.

“So that was cooking fresh all the time, parboiling vegetables, peeling them, throwing off the water to get the potassium off. And all of that is gone overnight.

“I have my energy back, complexion back, kidney is working 100% and the scar is well heeled. Now they don’t take out the old kidney. I have three kidneys at the moment. They plumb it into the bladder and connect it up to your blood system and away it goes.      

“The donor was a middle aged lady in Wales. The two kidneys were flown in on Sunday night, the 15th, into Belfast airport at half ten.   

“They were accessed down in the theatre and were fit for purpose. One man went down at half eleven and he got her first kidney and I went down at half past two and I got the second one. So two lives were saved and I am sure that she donated all her other organs as well. 

“They City Hospital in Belfast was the only hospital that stayed open for transplanting during Covid. They moved over to the Royal Victoria; there was an isolation unit there and they took it on and they did 101 transplants during Covid.

Ray McGough (left) with the The Bel Canto choral group performing at the Christmas Lights switch on in Ballyshannon. Picture Thomas Gallagher

“Now they have also done transplants for patients from the South as well. There is a magnificent team there. They go 24 hours, seven days a week. And they were the only hospital in the whole of the United Kingdom; Beaumont was closed during Covid, but they stayed open, as was the case imn much of Europe at the time. So that is dedication, so I got my transplant in City Hospital, level 11.

Meningitis backdrop that saw Ray at death's door

The backdrop to the kidney transplant story is equally dramatic, it has to be said.

Ray recalled:

“In 2004, I caught meningitis. I was in Bundoran school at the time. I was in class and got a pain in my back. I went down to John McLean, the Principal and told him that I thought I was having a heart attack.   

He went to Sligo Hospital, but nothing was picked up at that stage.  

By the Sunday, he collapsed in his house and the end result was that he was brought to the Royal Victoria in Belfast, where he was admitted in a coma.

“I was there for three months on a life support machine. They were turning off the machine on the Thursday and family was up and the black clothes for the funeral were bought. So my sister, who is now 90, was taken in by the consultant and he told her that they had done everything possible with this man and they were thinking of turning off the machine on Thursday. 

“She replied that she was doing a Novena and was not finished until next week. ‘Give him a few more days’. 

I opened my eyes on the Tuesday, and the first thing I asked was whether the Christmas exams were over. And this was Easter time. ‘Who is teaching my class? The Leaving Cert class.’ Those were the two questions I asked the nurse. I was down to three stone. I was devastated. I could have been paralysed or anything but no, the only side effect that I had was muscle loss and encephalitis (fluid on the brain). So I was falling a lot.         

“So they wanted me to retire early, but I refused that and took the year off and the Donegal ETB was very good to me. 

“So I recovered and went back. And I did another ten years and in the meantime I also became the Deputy Principal and retired in 2007.

But having returned to classes in Bundoran, life was still never the same.

He explained: “Because of the meningitis, I was on a cocktail of medicines and that affected my kidneys down the years with the result that issues began 13 years ago. I had a biopsy done in Altnagelvin and they detected that the kidney function was down at 23%. That was fairly low and I started on a renal diet with the dietician and was in the renal unit every two months.”
The Kidney function was dropping about 1 percent every visit until the last episode, before the transplant. 

“But what people don’t realise is that good work is going on in the hospitals. We hear all about trolleys and waiting lists, all the negative, but there is also a hell of a lot of wonderful stuff going on locally. 

“I got wonderful care in the Belfast Trust in the City and Victoria Hospitals as well as the renal unit in Omagh, who are tip top. And it is local to Donegal. They do transplants from the south so I would suggest that anybody that is in dire straits, it is nearer than going to Beaumont. So that is my story.”

He added that people needed to think increasingly of an all island approach when it came to their health and “there are no borders when it comes to health”.

“It was like winning the lotto. Better than winning the lotto. You can have a million pounds in the bank but it is no good to you, if you do not have your health. The transplant was done on January 16, 2023 in Belfast city hospital which is on level 11 of the tower block. The time of the transplant was 2.30am. There was no ICU (intensive care unit) afterwards, just recovery and I was back on the ward at 7am that same morning.”

He was discharged three days later.

Ray has now set up a GoFundMe page on https://gofund.me/53560fc7

Even a small donation could help Ray McGough reach their fundraising goal. And if you can't make a donation, it would be great if you could share the fundraiser to help spread the word.

But a remarkable story, you will agree!