INNISFAIL – It was two years ago when Dave Kinsella was driving down Highway 2 and he noticed an intriguing billboard sign at Bowden.
Ryan McLennan, a Calgary man, was advertising a desperate lifesaving plea for a living kidney donor.
It was a turning point in Kinsella’s life, which at that point was moving along just fine. The 46-year-old comes from a well-established, respected local family. He has a great job, a loving wife and children and is healthy. However, seeing McLennan’s desperate highway plea changed everything.
“When he first came home and he said he was going to do this. I thought, ‘yup, he is. I know he is, when he sets his mind to doing something,'" said his wife Tracey.
“I didn’t have reservations because I just felt like this was the journey we were on and if we need to re-evaluate - one year, five years, 20 years – the path will be there. We will be led to where we need to go.”
Dave’s new journey began by offering one of his kidneys to McLennan. The offer was accepted but tests later revealed it was not a match.
“When I found out I wasn’t a match I kept going,” said Dave.
He did, however, become friends with McLennan, whose eventual donor was Tony Timmons, a truck driver from Airdrie. Dave visited McLennan two days after his surgery on Nov. 28, 2018.
“We were blown away because we had close family members, friends and people who did not step forward for years and years and years. We never dreamt that there were people out there like Dave and Tony,” said McLennan, who today is a healthy 44-year-old active high school teacher. “When I hear Dave’s story it sticks with me day and night. It’s something I don’t forget. It is truly inspirational.”
A year after that hospital visit to see McLennan a match was found in southern Alberta for Dave’s kidney. There was testing last December, with surgery scheduled for Jan. 29 at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre.
The anonymous recipient, waiting for surgery in the same hospital unit, received Dave’s kidney immediately after his organ was removed. Dave will never know the recipient’s identity. That is the law. Dave is fine with that. His journey did not end.
“The big point of this is not what I did or the hundreds of others that do the anonymous donations,” said Dave, who’s committed to raising greater public awareness for citizens to register their organs for donations once they pass way. “If we could get our organ donor registration so that everybody who wanted to donate a kidney when they pass away, none of this would be necessary.”
In 2018 there were a total of 176 kidney transplants in Alberta, with another 397 on the waiting list. There are no provincewide statistics available for 2019 but according to the southern Alberta branch of The Kidney Foundation of Canada there were 80 kidney transplants in southern Alberta last year, with 52 being from deceased donors and 28 from living donors.
According to The Organ Project, a non-profit organization focused on ending the organ transplant waiting list, Canada’s donation rate at 20.9 donors per million people is below many other countries, including Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Meanwhile, it’s estimated that while 90 per cent of Canadians have shown support for organ donation only about one in five are signed up with provincial registries.
However, Calgary MP Len Webber is leading the charge with a private member’s bill, Bill C-316, that could make things a whole lot easier for those who like the idea of donating their organs once they pass on. Webber’s bill proposes to add a question on tax forms about whether people will consent to becoming organ and tissue donors. The proposed legislation has already received all-party support and is expected to move forward in the House of Commons later this year.
In the meantime both Dave and Tracey are also advocating for more living organ donors.
They said there was excellent information available from all Calgary medical staff right from the start of their journey, with each step thoroughly explained, including the risks.
“You could never claim you were making an uninformed decision,” said Dave. The couple learned the remaining kidney actually grows up to 50 per cent and takes over all functions. The risks include no longer having a second organ in case of future injury or illness, and if kidney disease develops in the future, the donor would require dialysis and a transplant sooner.
“Realistically the risks are minimal,” said Dave. “Some people have asked me about the risks and I think most people, if they came across somebody in life- threatening trouble, and you knew there was minimal risk to you, you would go in and save that person. This is just more time to think about it.”
Still, there are many who now look at Dave and other living kidney and organ donors as truly heroic. Most people, said McLennan, do not realize the high number of gruelling obstacles one has to take to freely donate a kidney.
“You might want to climb Mount Rushmore but to actually do it? Ninety-nine per cent of the population don’t understand how hard it is to give it even when you want to do it,” said McLennan. “Just getting past all the testing, getting past all the red tape and getting asked a thousand times, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ and getting past family members and friends questioning you.
“Especially if you have kids. I didn’t know Dave had kids until I met with him a couple of weeks ago, and that even blows me away even more,” he said. “Other people had so many other reasons but Dave and Tony are two of the most inspirational stories I know.”
For more information on becoming a living donor go to:
https://kidney.ca/Get-Involved/Be-an-Organ-Donor/Consider-Being-a-Living-Kidney-Donor
To become a registered organ donor in Alberta (deceased) go to:
https://myhealth.alberta.ca/pages/otdrhome.aspx
