Television presenter of UTV Abigail Ashley has told her story on how she lived as a patient with kidney disease and her survival.

Sharing her story on Adom TV’s M’ashyase3 with Afia Amankwah Tamakloe, the TV presenter revealed how she was diagnosed with kidney disease fifteen years ago. She said she was informed that she had only five years more to live.

Abigail stated that before she was diagnosed with the deadly disease, she started feeling headaches that became worst each day until she went for a routine check-up where she was diagnosed with kidney disease.

“It started as a mere headache and I thought it was stress from work so I will talk to doctors and they will prescribe pain killers for me to subdue the pain. But one night in 2007, I started coughing with blood in my sleep and went to tell my mum about it.

“I was rushed to a private hospital nearby only to wake up the next day with my entire body swollen. I was transferred to Korle-Bu where I was diagnosed with Stage 4 chronic disease and due to the severity, I was asked to go on dialysis but I declined,” she told Afia Amankwa Tamakloe on Adom TV’s M’ashyase3.

Abigail stated that she refused to go on dialysis after seeing other patients with kidney diseases suffering after going through dialysis. After she refused the dialysis, a doctor walked to her and told her she had only 5 years to live as she was already in stage 4 of kidney disease.

“My condition still could not get better while the swelling also got worse and a man who heard me share my struggle offered to take me to India for treatment which he fulfilled but when we got there, the doctors ordered for me to be brought back to Ghana to continue treatment because they said the condition was such that they could not do anything,” she said.

But 12 years down the line following her diagnosis, she successfully went through a kidney transplant and has lived additional years which she owes all to God.