A remarkable love story is continuing to unfold this week in Sydney, following the decision of Julie Lee to give her husband Colin one of her kidneys. Col and Julie are both well known in Ballina for their long history of voluntary community work, particularly with Rotary. Their 51st wedding anniversary is this weekend.
Now 76, Col told The Echo his renal function has been a bit of a worry since he got sick in 2015, and then became worse following COVID and the floods, with increasing exhaustion and pain.
‘I was just getting tighter and tighter, and achy, really achy,’ he remembers. ‘And I said to my doctor, I know I’m working very hard. I’m putting in huge days, and we’re up on the top of houses, and we’re digging trenches, and we’re doing all sorts of stuff, and I’m not getting any younger, but I really think we should have a decent check up.
‘So when I had the check up, I had 20 per cent kidney function, but I’d been running on about 33 per cent since 2015 and truly it didn’t affect me at all.’
Dialysis
With his numbers heading in the wrong direction, a kidney specialist told Col his prospects weren’t good – he was looking at going on dialysis within six to twelve months.
As his health deteriorated, unable to sleep due to severe aching and cramps, Col went on to peritoneal dialysis in April of 2025,which is slightly less invasive than hemodialysis and involved treatment at home overnight, instead of multiple hospital visits each week.
At this stage his kidneys were still operating at 10 per cent, which meant he was still able to use them to some extent during the day.
After some months of this, with the treatment becoming increasingly difficult to manage, Col talked to his doctor about the possibility of having a kidney transplant. The transplant regional coordinator said a transplant would only be approved if he could find a live donor, and have the procedure done at RPA Hospital in Sydney, known as the best transplant hospital in Australia.
Julie to the rescue
Remarkably, Col’s wife Julie immediately offered to see if she was a suitable person to provide a kidney transplant. ‘That was very special,’ said Col.
After a series of very detailed tests, mostly conducted in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, it was found that husband and wife were indeed an ‘exceptionally good’ match for a kidney transplant, right down to having the same blood type.
With Col’s health deteriorating, and no other option but to go on to full hospital dialysis, a short term solution at best, they decided to proceed with a transplant. They were told that anti-rejection drugs would still be needed, but tests showed prospects were very good.
‘Julie saw her specialist, and then they sent us to Sydney for interviews and psychological tests and all sorts of things and everything came back really good,’ Col said. ‘So we set a date, which was the 14th of April, and I went into hospital on the 13th of April. Ironically, that’s my birthday!’
Beautiful birthday present
With Julie Lee’s own health being ‘outstanding’, the transplant process went remarkably smoothly, as Col remembers. ‘Julie’s kidney comes out and goes into me a few hours later. Next morning, which is nearly unheard of, I was up at 10 o’clock walking around.’
And did Julie come through the operation okay? ‘Julie was a bit nauseous, that’s all. That afternoon, she was up. The doctors and the nurses just shook their heads. They couldn’t believe it – never seen anyone Julie’s age bounce back like it. She looked fantastic.
‘She had a bit of pain from where the kidney’s come out, because it’s a bit lonely, the other one. Luckily they do it through keyhole surgery these days.’
So you only need one kidney to live a healthy life, is that right? ‘Yes, there’s a lot of people only born with one kidney.’
And how did it go for you? ‘Well, next morning, when the main transplant clinic nurse came around and did an inspection of all the patients, she said, “Oh, we’ll get you up after lunch. I think you look pretty good.”
‘I said, “I feel all right. I think the drugs are doing half the work,” but anyhow, she said, “We’ll get you up after lunch. You can sit in that chair.”
‘Okay. Anyhow, at 10 o’clock, the nurse said to me, “do you want to get out of that bed and get into that chair?” I said, “No chair.” She said, “really?” I said, “No, you come with me and hang on to all these contraptions and pipes and things, and I’ll go around and see Julie.” She’s around the other side of the building.
‘”She said, “Are you up to that?” I said, “Yeah, of course.” So around we went, and she followed me around with all this stuff, and I saw Julie, which was lovely. Then we went around again in the afternoon, and she was up by then. So we were wandering around the ward together the next day after the transplant. They couldn’t believe it!’
Out of hospital
Col Lee remembers, ‘Julie was out in in four days. I got out in seven days, and mate, we haven’t looked back.’
With the welcome assistance of Rotary colleagues Dave and Robyn Harmon for the first few days after the operation, in Sydney, Col and Julie Lee are now well on the road to recovery, making it in and out to the followup clinic and to specialist’s appointments under their own steam.
Col is pleased to report that he has already been able to reduce the anti-rejection drugs, with his blood pressure and other vital signs all looking very good, and no further need for dialysis, thanks to Julie.
He said RPA’s treatment and patient care is second level. ‘We’ve had a pretty amazing experience. The support you get from the staff of that hospital, it’s incredible.’
How has it affected your relationship, doing this together? Has it changed?
Col said, ‘We’ve got a different respect for one another, and we’ve been around a long time! I’m just so grateful Julie’s been able to do this for me. It’s something you can’t express. It’s just too emotional.
‘It’s so beautiful that here’s your wife – she’s been part of you for 53 years, really, and she’s given you something that’s going to give you life again. Because prior to that, mentally, I didn’t think I could keep doing dialysis for a long time. It’s too demanding on your body.
‘Now I’ve just got to take the right tablets and I’m sorted. Currently the kidney is showing no signs of rejection.’
Have you ever heard of a husband and wife doing something like this before? ‘I saw one on TV while back, and there’s a couple of people we’ve met,’ said Col. ‘We’ve met one couple in Ballina, where the wife gave her husband a kidney. That was eleven years ago, and they’re going great.’
He said fitness was very important for anyone contemplating a transplant, with Julie and Col both keen walkers, and Julie regularly going to the gym. ‘Now, it’s just a matter of building that muscle tone up again and getting out fitness level back again.’
The couple are planning to take a step back from their volunteer work and go on some big trips after they return home. ‘We haven’t had a holiday for quite a while!’ said Col.
‘We’ve still got a good life ahead of us and a good life together ahead of us. That’s what we want. That’s how we want to live.’
He said he wanted to thank his fellow Rotarians and the wider Ballina community for all their support. ‘It’s all been so beautiful.’
Very lucky
For her part, Julie Lee, said they had both been ‘very lucky’ throughout the process. ‘We’ve been very, very fortunate that everything’s gone as well as it has, because it’s an unknown. You don’t know until you go through it whether it’s going to work or not. So it’s a gamble.’
Did you have some trepidation about giving up one of your kidneys? It wasn’t a risk-free operation for you either. ‘It is a risk to my health, but I’m fortunate that I have very good kidney function,’ Julie told the Echo.
‘As Colin said, there’s a lot of people out there with only one kidney who are leading a perfectly normal life.’
How are you feeling now? ‘I get tired, which apparently is part and parcel of it, but that will go. I still get some twinges and things in my tummy. Apart from that, I don’t feel any different at all. I don’t have to take any tablets or anything. No changes in my diet or anything. Everything’s pretty normal for me.’
Did anyone try and tell you not to do the transplant? ‘A couple of people tried to talk us out of it. They didn’t think it was such a great idea, but yeah, I just had confidence that we could do it,’ said Julie.
‘I had a good feeling about the whole thing, and a lot of confidence in the people that we were dealing with. I didn’t really get nervous until they were wheeling me into the theater. It became very real then. But prior to that, both of us were pretty cruisey about the whole thing.
‘I think we went down as a couple of legends in the renal ward because we recovered so well.’
Award
I think you should get an award or something, but I guess your reward is getting some more healthy years together? ‘Yes, that was the whole thing, to get Colin healthy and spend more time with one another and do the things that that we want to do, because we’ve both devoted a fair bit of time and energy to the local community.’
That’s actually a bit of an understatement, with both Colin and Julie receiving OAMs to acknowledge their extensive community work over the years.
They both want to emphasise that transplant surgery is an amazing thing, and people should think more about doing becoming donors, considering the massive shortage of lifesaving organs.
‘I’d like to see more of it because it saves people’s lives,’ said Julie Lee. ‘We hope our story will inspire other people to go forward and have a transplant,’ said Col.
The couple also want to pay tribute to their doctors, nurses and specialists.
‘My specialist is Dr William James, and he is just known throughout Australia, almost a legend to talk about,’ said Col. ‘Everybody down here at RPA knows him and has the highest respect.
‘He’s an amazing specialist and totally committed to his patients.’ Julie also wanted to publicly thank her specialist, Dr Sanjeev Bawaja.
If all continues to go well, Col and Julie Lee are hoping to return to Ballina by the end of this month.
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