Organ donation can impact anyone at anytime, whether as a donor, or a potential recipient.
Twenty-one year old accounting student Adele Orr lives with Cystic Fibrosis.
“I have the luxury of knowing ahead of time that I will need a transplant, but some people may only have a couple of days notice. It is extremely important for people to register to be an organ donor because you never know when it’s going to hit you.”
Orr is currently not on the transplant wait list.
“I’m not quite there yet. It is a progressive disease so at the moment I’m at 40% lung capacity, compared to someone my size without cystic fibrosis. When you get below 20, that is when they start looking at a transplant. I know two people who are on the lung list right now, one of them has been waiting for over two years,” said Orr.
“So I’m really, really hoping that when my time comes it will not be two years because when you’re listed you have to drop everything. You can’t go to school, you can’t go to work, you have to move away from your family. You have to find an apartment in downtown Toronto. You’re at the hospital two or three times a week for testing and monitoring, so you really can’t have a life when you’re listed.”
Orr is a member of the Nipissing Gift of Life Association.
She along with Mary Beaucage and Claire Stewart made a presentation to North Bay City Council earlier in the week, in the hope of educating North Bay citizens about the importance of becoming registered organ donors.
Beaucage underwent a kidney transplant from a living donor. In her case, a relative was the right match.
“I was on dialysis for almost three years, so I was pretty much on the wait list right from the get-go. If not for a transplant, I would still be on dialysis. They will keep you on the donor list while people are going through the living donor process with you because they don’t want you to lose your spot either. They’ll just put you on pause, which is okay. If things don’t work out, you’ll still be on the deceased donor list, but you’re still going through dialysis at the same time.”
Beaucage describes the process as an emotional roller coaster. It’s been three years since her transplant.
“The first year is really crucial and then the next marker is at five years. For kidney disease, you have a better chance with a living donor than you do with a deceased donor because we’re essentially waiting for the operating room at the same time. They retrieved her kidney and they wheeled me into the room beside her and the kidney went directly from one room to the other, so there was no wait time in between. The kidney didn’t have a chance to go dormant.”
Five years ago Claire Stewart received a liver. She told city council she would like more people to become registered organ donors.
North Bay is number one in the province in organ donor registrations.
“Fifty-six percent of North Bay citizens are registered organ donors, and of course we want that to be higher to save lives. We’d like to see a 95 percent rate for North Bay. I’m not asking for much,” laughed Stewart.
“It’s been my experience that at every information booth I set up at an event, there’s two or three people that tell me stories about ways they have been touched by organ transplants. The point to get across is to raise awareness, increase registrations so people don’t have to die young, they can have longer lives.”
“The easiest way to register to become a donor is to go to beadonor.ca put in your health card and register and it takes less than two minutes,” said Orr.
Her response to anyone who is indecisive about becoming a donor is simple.
“If you needed an organ, would you take it?”
Information about the local association and organ donations can be found at [email protected] and on Facebook at Nipissing Gift of Life Association.