Inverness woman supports NHS Highland Organ Donation campaign while awaiting kidney donor
Hooked up to a dialysis machine for over 15 hours a week, Zabrina Harvey’s life is on hold as she waits for a kidney donor to give her a second chance at living fully. Her story is a powerful call to consider organ donation, and the life-changing impact it can have.
For over 15 hours a week kidney dialysis patient Zabrina Harvey is a prisoner in her Inverness bedroom, her life on hold.
The mum-of-three can’t organise spontaneous day trips or weekends away with her young children and sometimes struggles to find the energy to play with them after school. She can’t hold down a regular job either.
But without those 15 hours a week, exhausting, and frustrating as they are, Zabrina Harvey wouldn’t be alive.
“This is my life now,” she shrugs, as she faces getting herself hooked up for another session on the home dialysis machine that takes up most of the floor-space in her bedroom. She is sharing her situation as part of the current NHS Highland Organ Donation campaign, of which we are a media partner.
For the past two-and-a-half years, Zabrina has been in acute kidney failure and is on the organ donation waiting list for a new kidney. In the meantime, she is on home dialysis, five days a week, for three or more hours at a time.

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But she is pragmatic; “I hate having to do this, but it’s my only option if I want to stay alive. And although I’m just lying here during it, sometimes it feels like I’ve run a marathon.”
Zabrina’s life is one of strict routine; every day except for Wednesdays and either Saturday or Sunday, she gets up early to see to her kids and the dogs, then primes her machine so it can do what it needs to do before she can hook herself up to it.
With a heat pad to counteract shivers, a bottle of water and a snack at hand to ward off thirst and hunger pains, and two tiny dogs curled up beside her for company, at 9.30am Zabrina starts sterilising the tabletop, her arm, and all the equipment she will need to safely hook herself up to the dialysis machine.
The process of getting herself attached to the machine is messy, ugly, and painful. Surgeons have created a huge fistula, connecting one of her veins to an artery to create a ‘super-vein’ which sits at the surface of her upper arm. This gives Zabrina access to fast-flowing blood through a structure that is strong enough to withstand daily needles. It allows all of her blood to be cleaned by the machine in just a few hours.
After sterilisation, her next task is picking off the scabs that formed after yesterday’s dialysis, so she can insert today’s needles.
Although this is a near-daily routine, it isn’t a quick one, nor does it always go smoothly. On the day of our visit there were blood spills, and the machine beeped loudly and relentlessly as it detected a tiny air bubble on one of the scores of tubes.
Zabrina is on the organ donor waiting list and every day hopes for the call to say the team have found her a new kidney to - remove toxins and excess fluid from the body and keep her healthy and well. It would give her freedom to work while the kids are at school, to take holidays, to visit family in Aberdeen and Canada, and to be more of a mum to her children.
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And Zabrina doesn’t just have to imagine the difference between life on dialysis and life post-transplant, as this is the second time she has been on the waiting list.
At 19, she suffered severe kidney failure and lived on hospital dialysis for five years before her first transplant. That was back in 2004, but she clearly remembers the positive impact of receiving her new organ.
Good health gave her freedom to travel throughout her 20s. She met her husband James, lived with him in Canada and Scotland, and started her family. And although always aware of her responsibility to take care of her donated organ, with healthy eating, exercise and regular check-ups, her life was as normal as anyone else’s.
In December 2022, Zabrina again experienced the symptoms of kidney failure and was rushed back onto dialysis. It’s not unusual for donated kidneys to have a limited lifespan, and 13 years is an impressive shift for a 150g organ in a host body. Zabrina found herself back in the routines of her early 20s.
Unless a suitable candidate comes forward to offer live kidney donation, Zabrina is acutely aware that for her to get another chance at a life free from dialysis, someone else will have to die. And that’s an uncomfortable feeling for her; her eyes spill tears as she talks about it.
“I have really mixed feelings about this,” she explains. “I need a donated kidney to be able to get on with my life for myself and my kids, but there is huge guilt too about what another family will have to lose for me to get a new lease of life.”
While Zabrina can be kept alive as she waits for a kidney donor, the harsh reality is that every year, Scots on the waiting list die because there are not organs available for them.
Her renal consultant, Dr Stewart Lambie, explained that far from being alone, Zabrina is one of 17 patients in the NHS Highland area who are on dialysis waiting for kidneys.
"Seeing the transformation in the life of a patient who has had a successful kidney transplant is one of the most rewarding parts of my job,” he said. “We get to know our dialysis patients very well, and to see and hear the difference in energy levels and enjoyment of life when they receive an organ is really rewarding. We try our best to make their time on dialysis as good as possible, but it is still very hard to watch them waiting for a kidney to turn up month after month. More kidney transplants would make a massive difference to our patients."
Zabrina added: “If I could say anything to anyone who thinks that being on the organ donor list is not for them, it would be this; ‘If you die, you don’t need your organs anymore. Be someone’s hero and donate them. It will change their life forever’.”
Organ Donation in Scotland brings hope out of tragedy. Find out more about organ donation here and register your wishes online. Then talk to your family about your wishes. Although Scotland legally has an opt-out system, your family’s wishes will always take precedence if you die in circumstances that mean you could become a donor, so your wish to donate could be overridden.
Myth busting
Am I too old to be a donor? For organs, the deciding factor is the donor's physical condition rather than their age. Organs from people in their 70s and early 80s and tissue, such as corneas from those in their early 90s can be successfully transplanted. At the other end of the scale, children can register as organ donors from the age of 12.