If you’re not sure about ticking that organ donor box on your driver’s licence, consider Sophia Greaves, 25.

She is a pupil at Conyers Dill & Pearman, she likes travelling, and spending time with friends and family. If it wasn’t for a kidney transplant at the age of 15, it would have been a lot harder to accomplish her goals.

“Without a kidney transplant, I would have been able to study law, but it would have been a lot more difficult,” Miss Greaves said. “Socially, my life would have been a lot more restricted. I think I still would have pursued my academics and a lot of the career decisions I have chosen.”

At the age of nine, Miss Greaves was diagnosed with discoid Lupus. Lupus is a disease where the immune system goes ‘wrong’, and becomes overactive. It can affect any organ of the body. The disease has been called ‘the Great Mimic’ because symptoms can be so diverse, including fatigue, rashes, allergies, depression and kidney failure. Systemic lupus affects the internal organs and often produces a mild rash or flush on the face. Discoid lupus usually causes a more pronounced facial rash that can cause scarring and may also result in severe hair loss and scarring of the scalp.

Miss Greaves attended the Bermuda High School. While other kids left school at the end of the day to pursue extra-curricular activities, Miss Greaves had kidney dialysis three times a week, usually for three hours.

“I played the viola and piano, but I didn’t do as much sports because I didn’t want to overexert myself,” she said. “Dialysis is very tiring. You do get a lot of complications arising out of that. I had a lot of infections and general fatigue. Also, the scheduling of it was really disruptive to my day.

“I never stopped going to school when I was on dialysis, but doing dialysis for nine hours a week would have been difficult in university, or while leading a working life.”

At first, doctors hoped that Miss Greaves wouldn’t need the kidney transplant, but she was being heavily medicated, and the benefits of the transplant outweighed staying on dialysis.

The option was to either get a donation from a living relative or go on a transplant list for a cadaver kidney.

In July 1997, Miss Greaves’ father, Franklin (Bucky) Greaves, donated one of his kidneys to his daughter.

“For my father the decision was natural,” said Miss Greaves.

Miss Greaves said she was very excited to get her kidney transplant, because it meant a return to normal life.

“I knew I wouldn’t have to be on dialysis,” she said. “I knew that life could return to the way it was before I was diagnosed with renal failure.

“Leading up to the transplant, I did get nervous, because it was a major operation, and I was young at the time. There is a relatively long recovery period. I was quite active, and for six or seven weeks I would be recovering, and taking things a lot slower than I would normally. However, it was never a matter of me second guessing whether I wanted to go through with it or not.”

After the kidney transplant, Miss Greaves’ life changed dramatically. The operation did all that she had hoped.

“I felt like I was back to normal,” she said. “Before, I was on high doses of steroids. I was tired often, and fighting off a lot of infections. All of those things were nullified and went completely after the transplant. Six to seven months after the transplant I was looking how I looked before I was sick. I got the transplant the summer before I went into the fourth year of high school. By that December I was back in extracurricular activities sports and so forth.”

At the time of the kidney transplant, Miss Greaves’ mother Linda was also on dialysis. Miss Greaves is the third generation of women in her family to have Lupus. In 1986, her grandmother died from renal failure.”

In my grandmother’s day they knew very little about Lupus and how to treat it,” said Miss Greaves. “She was in many ways a guinea pig, because many things were trial and error back then. Even when I was diagnosed in the 1990s, they didn’t have the appropriate measures in place to diagnose it, especially for someone who was as young as myself. But obviously, things have advanced a lot more since then. They know how to treat it and we can live a normal life.”

Her mother received a kidney transplant two years after Miss Greaves, from a cadaver donor. She is now also doing well.

“My family is very close,” Miss Greaves said. “Obviously, this illness is something that has brought my mother and I closer. It is one of the bonds that we share. But my entire family is very close.”

She said she does sometimes think about the possibility that her children could inherit the disease, but she doesn’t dwell on it.

“You have to cross that bridge when you come to it,” she said. “With medical technology being as advanced as it is, even if it does happen, medicine will be able to treat it.”

Miss Greaves said she hasn’t spoken that much about her kidney transplant, because she has been away in school.

She urged the public to become informed about organ and tissue donation. “It is difficult for some people to conceptualise parting with the organs of their deceased loved ones,” she said.

“It comes down to reliability. If you know someone or you are going through a situation where you are in need, the decision becomes easier.

“A lot of people don’t know the significant impact a transplant can have on a recipient’s life. The recipient can once again have quality of life.

“I hope that people find out as much as possible about organ donation. I think it is the responsibility of people in my situation to get that message across.”

Miss Greaves received a law degree from Kings College in London, and a masters degree in political communications from the London School of Economics. She is considering going into corporate law.