Several challenges remain after kidney transplantation, which can negatively affect the quality of life, physical activity and lifestyle of kidney transplant recipients. Some common areas of concern affected are: fatigue, mood/emotions, pain, sleep, nutrition, sexual function, mobility, relationships with family and friends. The goal of this website is to give you some tools to help you live the life you want to live, even with the challenges that arise after kidney transplantation.

To start thinking about the life you want to live after transplantation, here is a three-step approach that you might find useful, although you also might find it hard.

All the steps are shown below. You can use a diary to register your answers. You can also print out a table using this link.

What are the parts of your quality of life that are affected after kidney transplantation?

What are the five most important areas of your life that are affected after kidney transplantation? Write the most important areas in your diary or printed version of the table.

How much are these parts affected?

For each area, try to score (in the second column of the table), how much each area you wrote has been affected after kidney transplantation. From “the worst you can imagine” to “exactly as you would like it to be”.

What are you willing to “spend”?

Imagine you have ten tokens to spend on changing the parts of your life that are most important to you. “Spend” more tokens on areas you feel are most important to you and spend fewer on areas that you feel are not so important. You might choose to spend all your tokens in one area or distribute them across all areas. It is your choice.

Now think about what you have within and around you to influence your capacity to change.
You can get some help with this in “Helpers and Obstacles”.

Step 1: Identifying areas

We would like you to think of the FIVE most important areas of your life that are affected by your condition.

Please write up to FIVE areas in the boxes below.

Step 2: Scoring each area step

In this part we would like you to score the areas you mentioned in Step 1. This score should show how you felt about this area over the past MONTH. Please score each area out of 10 using this scale:

  • 10= Exactly as you would like to be
  • 9= Close to how you would like to be
  • 8= Very good, but not how you would like
  • 7= Good, but not how you would like
  • 6= Between good and fair
  • 5= Fair
  • 4= Between poor and fair
  • 3= Poor but not the worst you could imagine
  • 2= Very poor but not the worst you could imagine
  • 1= Close to the worst you could imagine
  • 0= The worst you could imagine
Step 3: Spending points

We want you to “spend” 10 points to show which areas of your life you feel are most important to your overall quality of life.

Spend more points on areas you feel are most important to you and less on areas that you feel are not so important.

You don’t have to spend any points on an area.

You can’t spend more than 10 points in total.