Daughter saves mom, Winnipeg, Canada

Sacrifice ensures her mother won’t miss life’s milestones

by Alexandra Paul | Canada Press

WINNIPEG Angela Przybylski tears up at the thought of how her daughter gave her the ultimate gift.

Angela, 46, had a liver transplant in September at the Toronto General Hospital. Her daughter, Larissa Przybylski, was the donor.

Words seem too weak to convey the mother’s gratitude: “She saved my life.”

Two months later, both mother and daughter are well and resuming their lives in Winnipeg. Larissa’s liver has grown back, although doctors tell her that it will take a year to fully recover.

Larissa is 20, tall, willowy and the picture of health. You’d never know that, after doctors removed 65 per cent of her liver to donate to her mother, surgeons rushed her in for a second surgery to treat a complication from the initial surgery.

Nobody asked her to donate. An aunt had stepped forward too and Angela’s other child, a 24-year-old son, is also very close to his mother.

“I was the first one who stepped up (in the family) and said, ‘Book the flights, I really want to go through it,’” Larissa said.

Donating a liver isn’t as simple as signing a surgery waiver sheet.

There were months of testing. While the transplant team is built around a core of surgeons, experts outside the operating room include geneticists, psychiatrists, technicians and social workers.

The Toronto General transplant program is the largest in North America for living liver transplants; about one-third of the 130 to 140 liver transplants a year are from living donors. The surgery in Canada is also done in Edmonton and Vancouver.

Medically speaking, there’s a threshold for excellence and it’s a numbers game: if a program is not going to do 10 to 15 living liver transplants a year, a hospital typically won’t risk it.

Medicare covers the surgery and the doctors. But that’s it. The Przybylski family paid for an apartment in Toronto and flights back and forth from $20,000 raised in a social fundraiser.

Larissa’s testing started in June. Two days before the actual surgery, doctors were still covering all the bases.

At the last minute, Larissa had to pass a genetic test for Marfan’s disease, the same genetic disorder that afflicted Abraham Lincoln, a president in the United States. She was tested because of her lanky frame, long fingers and double joints, all Marfan hallmarks.

As the surgery approached, Angela’s life was literally draining away.

She was yellow with jaundice. Her body was flooded with 50 extra pounds of fluid. With her tissues saturated to the bursting point, the fluid buildup had exceeded her body’s ability to hold it all: Water was leaking out of the tops of her feet, wetting the socks she wore.

“After the surgery, the surgeon told my family that had they not done it, I probably would have lived for (only) a few months. ... It was that bad,” Angela said.

Angela suffered from a disorder called auto-immune hepatitis. A transplant is the only cure.

Every year, patients who need organs die because they can’t get them. Headlines about organ shortages are common, these days.

It’s no surprise, then, that Angela gets teary as she tells her story.

Larissa’s feelings are as tender as her mother’s. Both draw comfort from the other, sitting close together on Angela’s sofa to tell their story.

“She’s my mom. I love her and I know she’d do it for me in a heartbeat.”

Larissa’s composure starts to crack as she says, “I always saw her being there, for when I graduated, when I had children. ...”

Larissa is crying openly now. “If there was something I could do to have her be there, I was more than willing to do it.”