Guy’s Transplant Sport Team Manager Shares His Swimming Success
Meet George
During Organ Donation Week in the UK, we chatted with the Team Manager for the Guy’s Hospital Transplant Sports Team, George Newman. He shared not only his story of kidney failure and transplantation, but also about his own success at the Transplant Games, and how his love for the community led to him becoming Team Manager.
A Lifelong Kidney Patient
Being born with reflux and being given less than 24 hours to fight for his life as a newborn, George has been a kidney patient all his life. New treatments were thankfully successful, and have since improved so much that a similar diagnosis of reflux today, can be dealt with in a quicker way, with an even higher success rate.
After a childhood of slowly declining kidney function, George received his kidney transplant at the age of 10, and is grateful to have maintained stability with that same kidney throughout adulthood.
Fully admitting to not being a particularly active child (aside from a little karate in the hopes of becoming a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle), it wasn’t until he was 16 that George turned to swimming, inspired and encouraged by the Transplant Games. Attending the British Transplant Games in previous years as part of Guy’s Kids (now Evelina Children’s Hospital), it was here that a Team Manager spotted that George had potential as a swimmer, and if he could show dedication with training, he had a chance at being selected for the British team being sent to Canada for the World Transplant Games. The result was life changing for George, as he returned not only with 3 gold medals, but with a new-found confidence in himself.
Physical Activity & Long Term Health
Besides the well advertised benefits to health that physical activity provides, George speaks more about the long term maintenance of his overall health and wellbeing, from improved confidence and mental health, to becoming a young adult with the discipline to train, and a community of like-minded people to work with.
The Guy’s Transplant Sports Team
As Team Manager of the transplant sports team from Guy’s Hospital, George knows from personal experience that it’s not just about the sport, but about the mental and physical recovery from having a transplant. In addition to selecting and training a team for The Games, George aspires to encourage participation and activity in the community, not just when The Games are approaching, through regular events for patients at various stages of their transplant pathway.
Inspirations & Aspirations
Citing his father and his family as his biggest supporters and inspirations, George recalls that throughout his childhood, an emphasis was placed not only on working hard to achieve your goals, but making that work fun and rewarding. This translates into his role within transplant sports, as he intends to take this ethos forward to the team, hoping to instil a similar culture of trying the best you can, supporting each other through adversity, but above having fun and enjoying what you do, whatever the result.
The British Transplant Games have been held every summer since 1978 and are open to anyone who has been a recipient of a donated organ. Despite missing 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, focus is set for Leeds 2022, and teams from across the UK are raring to go.
The games not only celebrate generosity and compassion of donors and their families, they also show the benefits of transplantation and the need for donor organs. They encourage transplant recipients to recover and regain their fitness after their operations, whether they have competition plans or not, and increase public awareness of the NHS Organ Donation Register.
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