Miracles happen everyday at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC), and Susan and Jonathon Balabuck are living proof.

Five years ago Susan’s kidneys started to fail due to diabetes, leading to dialysis treatments twice per day. Besides the inconvenience, the treatments left Susan in a constant state of fatigue – even five minutes in the garden would wear her out. And then there are the health complications. Dialysis does not fully replace normal kidney function and eventually other organs like the liver and heart can also start to fail. Kidney transplant is the only real option for full recovery.

Unfortunately, the waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor is about seven to ten years. But Susan’s two sons both jumped in with the offer to become a living donor, and after several tests it was Jonathon who was found to have the best match.

According to Jonathon, it was a small sacrifice. “It is not as scary as you think,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice feeling knowing that she has all of her energy back, and she doesn’t need dialysis anymore.”

The number of kidney transplants using living donors has doubled in Ontario since 1994, as reported by the Trillium Gift of Life Network (www.giftoflife.on.ca). At current rates it will surpass the number from deceased donors this year. Mary Wrigley, a pre-dialysis and transplant coordinator at the TBRHSC, said that improved testing and better anti-rejection drugs have decreased the risks dramatically for both the donor and the recipient. “Live donation does work,” she said. After the operation, donors can expect to live long and healthy lives with few increased health risks.

In Jonathon’s case, that is an understatement. In fact, he was out of the hospital within a week and back to full duty as a firefighter at the Vickers Street Fire Station five weeks after the operation. This May he will run the Boston Marathon.

Susan’s recovery took longer, and she spent a total of two months in Toronto. But now you would never be able to tell that she had a kidney transplant just four months ago. “I feel really good, and everything is going well,” she said.

For Jonathon, that’s what made it all worthwhile. “We gave each other life.”

For more information about organ and tissue donations, contact Sandra Petzel, Organ & Tissue Donor Co-ordinator, TBRHSC at (807) 684-6033, petzels@tbh.net.

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