Three years ago, Millie Hujber was just like any other 17-year-old. She was dancing four nights a week, going to the gym, and focused on school. Life was full and fast-paced. Then, after a routine medical procedure, everything stopped.
“I had a bit of excessive bleeding so my wonderful GP did a blood test, then we got the call to say you need to come in,” Millie said.
That phone call changed everything. The tests showed her kidney function had fallen to just 20 percent.
The following week was full of tests and discussions of transplant. Her mother, a Nurse Unit Manager at Hervey Bay Hospital, Vanessa Hujber, remembers the moment vividly.
“We went from thinking she was this perfectly healthy teenager to hearing she needed a transplant. There was no warning, no signs. It was like the floor disappeared from under us.”
At first, doctors suspected a rare recessive genetic disorder. But further investigation revealed something even more unusual, Millie’s condition was caused by a spontaneous genetic mutation.
“They told us she was born with it,” Vanessa explained.
“The doctors were surprised she had even made it this far without being sick.”
For three years, Millie lived in a strange in-between. She wasn’t sick enough for dialysis but too unwell to live like a normal young adult.
“Some days I would be so tired, I’d just crash and cry out of nowhere,” Millie said.
“I also had been working since I finished year eleven but I eventually had to stop working due to the fatigue.”
Vanessa didn’t hesitate to offer her own kidney.
“I gave birth to her once and giving her my kidney felt like giving her life again.”
The scheduled surgery had a few false starts, once delayed by illness, another time by cyclone Alfred which shut down Brisbane’s hospitals.
By June this year, the day finally came at Princess Alexandra Hospital.
“I was so nervous,” Millie said.
“I was physically sick not because of my surgery but just watching my mum get ready and know she is doing all this for me.”
Vanessa felt the opposite.
“I was calm,” she said.
“All I wanted was for her to get on that table and receive my gift.
“That’s all that mattered.”
Surgeons placed Vanessa’s kidney into Millie’s abdomen, leaving her two diseased kidneys where they were. The operation was a success and the following weeks were spent in Brisbane recovering.
“It was nice to just have me and Millie time,” Vanessa said.
“We had a lot of bonding time which was healing as well.
Now, months later, Millie is back at home with her much loved pets and she is slowly returning to the life that kidney disease once stole from her.
She takes daily anti-rejection medication, has regular hospital checkups, and lives with a higher risk of infection. But her future feels possible again.
“I want to study nursing and paramedicine,” she said.
Vanessa said the experience changed her forever.
“She’s marked me twice in the same place first when I gave birth, and now with this scar from giving her my kidney. It’s a reminder of what we’ve survived together.”
Millie said the hardest part was feeling different from her peers.
“You wish you were just like everyone else,” she said.
“But then you realise this makes you stronger.”
She said a huge help during the process has been her wonderful support network.
“This is my second chance and I’m not wasting it,” Millie said.