The Gift of Life

BY ROBERT KIENER

How to Donate Did you know that donating your organs can give up to eight desperately ill people a new chance at life, and that donating your tissues can save up to 50? But you have to indicate your wishes. Sign and carry an organ and tissue donor card like the ones we’ve provided, or register your consent through your provincial registry (click here for a list). Because hospitals will not remove any organ without a relative’s consent, discuss your desire to donate with close family members. For more information, call your provincial health ministry, provincial transplant society, or go to www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/organandtissue/ facts_faqs/.

A light rain fell from Ottawa’s overcast skies as the Huntley Centennial Public School bus, nicknamed “the turtle,” lumbered down the two-lane Thomas A. Dolan Parkway. It was just after 7:30 in the morning of May 25, 1999, and the 48-passenger yellow bus was filled with the happy chatter of a dozen children ages nine to 14 on their way to school. In a right-hand seat towards the back of the bus, Sandrine Craig, 11, was joking with her friend Joanna Reardon, 12, who was leaning over from her seat in front.

Suddenly, as the bus passed through the intersection with Fifth Line Road, an out-of-control pickup truck came barrelling through the stop sign and crashed into the front left corner of the bus. The crumpled pickup exploded into flames, and the force of the crash toppled the bus. It flipped over twice, plowing through a fence and a rock pile, before landing on its side 30 metres from the crash site. The children inside the bus were tossed around like rag dolls; several were knocked unconscious, many were cut by broken glass.

Diane Craig, Sandrine’s mother, was away on business in Toronto when she was called to the telephone. Someone from her office was calling to say that Sandrine had been in a school-bus accident. Diane rushed to the airport to catch the next flight back to Ottawa. Waiting for the plane, she phoned Dr. David Creery, a pediatric critical care specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. He had devastat-ing news: Sandrine was in intensive care, unconscious, with severe brain trauma.

Just after nine the next morning, Dr. Creery walked into the ICU’s small conference room and greeted Diane and her son Kenny, 16, who had flown in from Calgary. Exhaustive tests, he explained, had shown no improvement. Sandrine was brain-dead and would never recover.

Hesitant, deeply aware of Diane’s private grief, Dr. Creery asked, “Have you thought about…”

Related Links The following links are for informational and educational use only. Reader's Digest does not endorse or guarantee any information contained therein. British Columbia http://www.transplant.bc.ca Alberta, Northwest Terriories and Nunavut http://www.cha.ab.ca/ Saskatchewan http://www.scoda.org/ Tracy Brand Provincial Program Manager Saskatchewan Transplant Program e-mail: tracy.brand@saskatoonhealthregion.ca Manitoba Sybil Stokoloff Organ Donor Awareness Coordinator Manitoba Transplant Program e-mail: sstokoloff@exchange.hsc.mb.ca Ontario Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Quebec http://www.quebec-transplant.qc.ca/ anglais/accueil2_e.htm New Brunswick New Brunswick Public Health and Medical Services Nova Scotia Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre Multi-Organ Transplant Program Prince Edward Island http://www.gov.pe.ca/infopei/ onelisting.php3?number=20740 Newfoundland and Labrador Max Bishop Donor Coordinator O.P.E.N. Program Health Sciences Centre St.John's, Newfoundland e-mail: hcc.bism@hccsj.nf.ca Yukon http://www.hss.gov.yk.ca/prog/hs /organdonor/index.html

Diane finished his sentence for him, “…donating Sandrine’s organs?” Two months earlier, when renewing her driver’s licence, Diane had received a brochure about organ donation and a donor card. Intrigued, she had skimmed both and set them aside. Now, as she thought about her dying daughter, she remembered the card and thought, How can I bury a beating heart or breathing lungs?

Kenny agreed instantly. “Mom,” he said, “it’s the right thing to do.” Twelve hours later Diane, Kenny and a circle of friends gathered around Sandrine’s hospital bed for the last time. They offered a prayer and bid private farewells to their “little angel.”

Diane Craig’s generosity changed—and saved—lives. A chronically ill eight-month-old baby, whose parents had already planned the infant’s funeral, received part of Sandrine’s liver. Her heart and lungs were transplanted into the chest of a 34-year-old woman who had suffered heart problems since birth, and who now reports she can exercise, travel and “enjoy life for the first time ever.” Two teenagers each received a kidney, and Sandrine’s corneas restored sight to a baby and an older woman. Diane received a number of anonymous thank-you letters reporting on the improvements the donations made in the recipients’ lives.

Diane Craig’s story is inspiring but, sadly, not typical. Canada’s rate of organ donation is one of the lowest among developed countries. “There is a critical shortage of donated organs across the country,” explains Dr. Heather Ross, medical director of the Cardiac Transplantation Program at the Toronto General Hospital and president of the Canadian Society of Transplantation. Last year 250 people on official waiting lists died while hoping for a transplant.

There are 28 hospitals across Canada that perform organ transplants. “We have the expertise to save more lives, but the organs aren’t available,” says Dr. Eugene Bereza, director of the Medical Ethics Program at McGill University and chairman of the Canadian Medical Association’s Committee on Ethics. “It is a tragedy for everyone.”

A major reason there is a shortage of transplantable organs is that the relatives of people who have died simply haven’t been asked. “Some physicians forget to consider organ and tissue donation with a brain-dead patient or wrongly assume that the potential donor’s family is too distressed to be approached,” explains Dr. Christopher Doig, associate professor of critical care medicine at the University of Calgary. It is the hope of Reader’s Digest and the Canadian Medical Association that doc-tors will be encouraged to ask about organ donation when they see a signed donor card like the ones we’ve included with this article.

Several myths about organ donation need debunking. Although many people believe their religion will not allow organ donations, virtually all major religions support it as a humanitarian act. Also, transplant doctors do not become involved until all efforts have been made to save a patient’s life, the patient has been declared brain-dead, and consent for organ and tissue donation has been confirmed.

The donation process takes about 24 hours and the body is then released to the family for funeral arrangements. Incisions from surgery are carefully sewn up, so an open-casket funeral is possible. Health coverage includes organ donation, so there is no financial burden to donor families.

There is no upper age limit for potential donors—the oldest Canadian organ donor was over 90, but someone teenage or younger will need the consent of a parent or legal guardian. Transplantable organs include the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, bowel, pancreas and stomach. Tissues include corneas, heart valves, bone, skin, tendons and ligaments.

Until more Canadians agree to donate, and doctors become more consistent about asking families for a loved one’s organs, seriously ill people will continue to die unnecessarily. “We can’t go on like this,” says Diane Craig, “We are burying the cure.”

In 1997 Adam Hannibal was shocked when his mother, Judy Cook, an energetic 56-year-old and executive di- rector of the Manitoba Federation of Labour Occupational Health Centre, told him she needed a heart transplant. “She never told me she was that seriously ill,” remembers Adam. But he felt confident Canada’s health-care system could find his mother a heart.

In October 1998 Adam and Judy learned a heart was available. Because Manitoba had no heart transplant facility, the two were whisked by air ambulance to London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario. But when they arrived they were crushed to learn the donated heart was not healthy enough to be transplanted.

For two months Judy waited in hospital for her new heart. Adam watched helplessly as his mother’s condition deteriorated. “Her heart weakened so much that she actually had a heart attack in the hospital,” says Adam, 29.

In December, Judy Cook’s disease-ravaged heart finally gave out. She was 57.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my mother,” says Adam. “I’m telling our story because I feel it’s so important for people to take the time to sign a donor card. Their signature can be the difference between life and death.”

While a 2001 Health Canada/Environics poll revealed that more than 90 percent of Canadians approved of organ and tissue donation, only 46 percent had signed donor cards or registered as donors. But, as statistics show, the intent to donate does not necessarily translate into actual donations. “Signing a card isn’t enough,” explains Diane Craig. “Potential donors have to tell their fam-ilies of their wishes.” Doing so takes much of the pressure off both the family and the hospital’s transplant co-ordinator at a very difficult time. Also, unless a donor’s family agrees with their loved one’s wishes, surgeons will not perform the process.

Pia Henriksson remembers the day in 1997 that her son Len, a University of B.C. commerce professor, came to her North Vancouver home and mentioned he had just signed up for the province’s new organ donor registry. “It was just like Len, who was always doing something to help people,” says Pia. “I didn’t think anything more about it.”

However, five years later Len’s words echoed in Pia’s mind after her 43-year-old son suffered a series of massive strokes that left him brain dead. “When the doctors explained Len’s condition and we realized he was not coming back to us, we were devastated,” remembers Pia.

After learning that Len had joined the donor registry, a nurse gently asked Pia and her daughter Christina Kennedy if they were in agreement with his wishes. “It was as if a light went on,” remembers Pia. “Len had already made his decision and we were just carrying it out. Here he was, even in death, helping people.”

Thanks to Len Henriksson’s—and his family’s—generosity of spirit, the lives of seven very ill Canadians were transformed. A few months after her son’s death, Pia received a letter that moved her to tears. It was from the wife of the recipient of Len’s liver: “Thank you for giving me back my husband, the father of our three children. We love and need him so much. To watch him wake up from his illness is nothing less than amazing. His excitement for life and energy should help you realize your family did the right thing.”

Says Pia Henriksson, “And to think that such joy came out of so much sadness. I am so proud of my son.”

Sign your Organ/Tissue Donor Card Now