SCOTS singer Charlotte Gordon Cumming who, along with her husband, accidentally ate poisonous mushrooms four years ago, is urging people to consider live kidney donation.
The singer-songwriter, who ate the deadly webcap mushrooms along with her husband Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, her brother Sir Alastair Gordon Cumming and his wife, is performing a benefit concert in London on November 15 in aid of the charity Give a Kidney.
The charity aims to raise awareness of altruistic kidney donation – a living person donating a kidney to someone they do not know with kidney failure.
Ms Gordon Cumming, who received a kidney from a live donor three months ago, said: "There are so many people who would say 'I'd do it for my relations but for a stranger? I don't think so.' I understand that, of course I do, but it is possible to live a perfectly normal life with one kidney.
"There are 7000 people waiting for a kidney in this country. And anything we can do to highlight the situation is worth it."
Ms Gordon Cumming was donated a kidney by the mother of her son's best friend, after being kept alive by dialysis for several years. This will be her first concert since the operation.
She added: "The transplant went very smoothly. I was with my lovely donor, Serena. I was in hospital a week, which was pretty good going, and Serena was out in three days.
"It's uncomfortable and you're dealing with a large scar, but you wake up from it with a very positive feeling. Mainly, you just think 'Wow, no more dialysis'."
Ms Gordon Cumming also revealed her husband, who received a kidney from his daughter last year, had never been back to Altyre – her family's estate in Moray where the group ate the mushrooms. She added: "I hope he will go back one day. A couple of years ago I went back to face it."
Ms Gordon Cumming's call for kidneys comes as a new organ donation campaign is launched as more than 40% of Scots have now signed up to the NHS Organ Donor Register.
This year's campaign has been designed to get people talking about donation.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article