During her hours-long ferry and bus trip to Vancouver from Nanaimo Dec. 3, former Vancouver resident Brenda Zakreski couldn’t help but tell complete strangers the reason for her journey.
“I told a few people that day,” said Zakreski, laughing during a phone interview with the Courier this week.
Zakreski has every reason to laugh. On Dec. 4, the 58-year-old received a new kidney after waiting for almost eight years, during which she received dialysis four times a week.
Zakreski never dreamed her life would one day be consumed by ill health. In 2001, Zakreski took what she considered a dream job teaching in Singapore with a goal to make enough money to build a house on the small property she’d recently purchased in Hawaii. Zakreski had a lifelong passion for travel and at the time her plans for the future included living part-time at her tropical home, while teaching English as a second language in Asia for months at a time.
But those dreams were dashed when months after arriving in Singapore, Zakreski became gravely ill. She was convinced her sickness was due to cancer, but her doctor in Asia was just as convinced she’d developed gastritis due to stress. Getting sicker and weaker by the day, Zakreski returned to Vancouver. Immediately upon arrival, Zakreski headed for a medical clinic on Granville Street, where a doctor took blood samples. While waiting for the results, Zakreski spent her time sleeping at a friend’s place, because she was incapable of moving. But then Zakreski received the phone call that changed her life.
“The doctor called and said, ‘You want to get to a hospital right now,’” Zakreski recalls.
Further tests confirmed Zakreski’s kidneys were rapidly failing and by May 2003 were at 50 per cent function. By then, Zakreski had moved to Vancouver Island to be near her brother and in 2003 she began dialysis treatments in Nanaimo, where she eventually settled. And while dialysis helped keep Zakreski alive, it was also damaging her heart so just how long she would live was questionable.
“I was on my last legs,” she says.
But then out of the blue on Dec. 3, Zakreski got the call she’d been waiting eight years for just as she was heading for a dialysis treatment. Zakreski was on the 9 p.m. ferry that same day heading for St. Paul’s Hospital.
Zakreski says spending her Christmas holidays recovering from a kidney transplant was the best gift ever and she can’t thank the transplant team, including her specialized doctors and nurses, enough.
Zakreski admits that before getting sick, she gave little thought to organ donation, but it’s front and centre on her mind these days. She’s written a letter to the donor’s family, thanking them for their generous gift. According to the rules of organ donation in B.C., Zakreski will never know the name of the person whose kidney she has unless the donor’s family chooses to contact her. Zakreski would like to thank the family in person, but in the meantime is doing what she can to highlight the B.C. Transplant Society’s organ donation registry.
According to the society, B.C. has a chronic shortage of hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers for transplant. Hundreds of B.C. residents are waiting for organ transplants and hundreds more are in line for a corneal transplant. Unfortunately some organs that could be used for transplant are lost because the family has no idea of their loved ones wishes.
As of Dec. 8, 2010 there were 377 B.C. residents waiting for a transplant, of which 296 were waiting for a kidney. The society notes as a result of the shortage of solid organs in B.C., many people die while waiting for a transplant. Fortunately, Zakreski was not one of them.
For more information on organ donation or to verify if you are a donor, go to transplant.bc.ca.
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