Jamai Loman’s donor kidney could fail tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Or in a year. No one knows and that is exactly the problem he lives with. “It is of course very difficult.”
RTL uses Jamai Loman widely as a presenter, but his health harbors an uncertainty that the TV channel cannot control. The presenter underwent a kidney transplant in 2018 and a donor kidney functions on average for fifteen to twenty years, but can also reject earlier. Tomorrow, next week, next year: no one can predict it.
Tomorrow
For a channel that plans programs far in advance and links faces to formats, this is of course a complicating factor that you simply get with Jamai. He is happy with the opportunities he gets at RTL, although the uncertainty is of course eating away at him more than at the top of the channel.
He tells in the Party: “It could be tomorrow. It could be the day after tomorrow. I try not to think about it too much. Only, what is a great comfort, I think, is that it won’t surprise me again like the first time. Now they see it coming and they can do something about it. And that makes a difference.”
‘A miracle’
It is a miracle that such a kidney transplant is possible at all, says Jamai. “So far it’s going great. I have a dream kidney that is doing fantastic. I take my medication faithfully and every four months I go to the hospital. They keep a close eye on me there. I like that. I am very lucky in that sense, as strange as it may sound.”
Jamai received his donor kidney from Andy. “Yes, of course that was not about anything. There were six family members who had come forward. My niece, two nieces, my sisters and my aunt. You can’t imagine that. I would have done exactly the same for them if I could have done it. The fact that it ended up being my brother-in-law is of course also special.”
Very ill
Living with a donor is not easy, says Jamai, but you are on medication for life and you become seriously ill several times a year. “The only thing that is difficult is that I am more susceptible to flu. If you are healthy, your body clears out such a flu within two or three days. For me it is a bit more intensive.”
“I get really sick two or three times a year. There’s nothing I can do about that. Yes, or I have to sit inside with the door locked, but I’m not going to do that. That’s not why I got the kidney. You also have to live.”