Winnipeg Free Press
Time to declare donor intentions
Hundreds waiting for transplants
Sarah Tait always joked about having a short lifespan.
Tait, 31, said she knew that people with cystic fibrosis have shortened lifespans and she fully expected not to live past her 40s.
Transplant facts
There are about 4,000 people waiting for a life-saving or life-enhancing transplant in Canada.
An organ donor's death could benefit the lives of several people.
There are always about 170 Manitobans ready to receive a kidney transplant and another 300 being evaluated for receiving a transplant.
Between 20 to 30 per cent of people waiting for an organ will die before one becomes available. In 2008, 215 Canadians died waiting for a transplant. More than 2,000 Canadians are waiting for corneas to restore their sight.
Kidneys and lungs are transplanted in Manitoba.
Transplant Manitoba performed 46 kidney transplants last year, with 20 of them coming from living kidney donors and the other 26 coming from people who wanted their organs donated.
The Lung Transplant program did four lung transplants last year.
The most important criteria for being a donor is their health, not age.
Organs which can be transplanted include kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, pancreas and small bowel.
To obtain a donor card, contact Transplant Manitoba's Gift of Life Program at 787-1897 or go to www.transplantmanitoba.ca to print out one.
-- Source: Transplant Manitoba
"I just never saw past that or imagined that," Tait said.
"I'd joke with my friends when I was 12 that I was middle-aged. In my 20s I said I was having a mid-life crisis. I guess it's because I knew some people with CF who died young."
In fact, Tait's CF progressed to the point that by the time she was in her early 20s, she had to use oxygen.
"The doctors told me I couldn't work," she said.
"I did less and less physical activity. By the time I got my surgery I could hardly walk to the bathroom.
"I had to sit on a chair in the bathtub because I couldn't stand for a whole shower."
Today, Tait no longer has to sit in the bathtub and she has just completed an early childhood education program at Red River College.
That's because Tait received a double-lung transplant four years ago.
Tait says she knows she received her lungs because somewhere, in the midst of their grief, a family decided to donate their loved one's organs so they could help someone else.
It's a message Transplant Manitoba wants to get out. Dr. Peter Nickerson, director of Transplant Manitoba's Gift of Life program, said they need more people to let their families know their donor intentions.
"If you haven't told anyone, then families don't know," Nickerson said.
"It's a tragedy when they go home and they find the (donor) card and it's too late."
According to Transplant Manitoba, the number of deceased multi-organ donors in Manitoba has been steady the last few years, with 13 in 2006, 15 in 2007, 14 in 2008 and 14 in 2009.
This year, up until the end of March, there have already been seven multi-organ donors.
Nickerson said it's far better than the seven donors in 2004 and six in 2005, but he says Manitobans and Canadians are still behind their American counterparts for donations.
"The U.S. is double what we have," he said.
"We've looked at missed opportunities and we know we could be as high as the United States. But we also know 38 per cent of the time loved ones are saying no."
Nickerson said it's mostly because families don't know what their family member's wishes were for organ donation.
Nickerson said he's hoping a proposed national registry will help.
"Other provinces that have registries find that when a person registers their intent, it helps when a physician goes to the family -- acceptance goes up to 90 per cent."
Nickerson said people don't realize not everyone who dies can have their organs given to others.
"It's only one per cent of deaths," he said.
"It's a rare event. You have to be a healthy individual free of any cancer or any transmissible disease. To be available for transplant, the heart still has to be beating, but tissues can be donated even after a heart stops."
Tait said she has no idea who the donor was that changed her life.
"I'm thankful all the time," she said. "All I know is my donor saved five people.
"I just wish there was some way my donor can know how thankful I am. I hope in the hereafter they're happy their organs came to me."
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