ST. FELIX, P.E.I. — Trina Doyle considers herself a very healthy person, but soon she will pack her bags for major surgery next week in Toronto.
At the top of her packing-list are surgical gloves and face masks to protect herself from infections while she travels.
Button-up pyjamas for post-surgery and frozen Glo Juice are also must-haves so she doesn’t become overwhelmed by hospital Jell-O.
Her surgery will remove a portion of her healthy liver so that it can be donated to an unknown person who requires a transplant.
“It’s a big surgery but it is a small part of my life in the grand scheme of things. It’s a very small piece of my pie,” Doyle said.
A long-time blood donor, Doyle has been on the bone marrow transplant list since her teens and she later signed up to be a stem cell donor but as of now, those donations have not been requested of her.
“It’s a big surgery but it is a small part of my life in the grand scheme of things. It’s a very small piece of my pie.”
The 39-year-old single mother of two signed up over a year ago to be a live donor after learning about a couple from West Prince, Kevin and Josephine Clements, who were advocating for people to get on the provincial registry to be organ donors. Kevin Clements died last July before receiving the donation he so desperately needed.
Josephine Clements said she is so proud of Doyle. “The reason she signed up was because of our (story) and she was hoping to be a match for Kevin,” she said. “Here she was, trying to help us.”
She’s thrilled that Doyle is willing to help someone she doesn’t even know.
“Miracles. To people who need the livers or the organs, it’s a miracle,” she said.
“I’m proud of her. I’m happy she’s still doing it. I hope that more people do this.”
Doyle said the reality of her decision didn’t fully set in until she received a call last May.
“I’m sure, for 20 minutes on the phone while I talked to (a member of the transplant team in Toronto), I was just ‘mouth-hung-open’. And literally, that’s what I thought, ‘What did I get myself into?' I never told a soul for a full week. I was petrified.”
Then, while visiting with her sister, Mandy Gaudet, she was scrolling through social media and landed upon a post about an individual in urgent need of a liver.
At her sister’s encouragement, she opened the email about the transplant procedure.
There she discovered a donor’s manual, which outlined that, since 1990, there have been 900 transplants with not one single death or long-term complication.
“It says the liver regenerates itself. It grows back to its normal size within a few weeks, so, my incision is going to take longer to heal than the liver will,” she said.
“And I thought, ‘Oh, well that’s not so scary then'."
"I thought, ‘Oh, well that’s not so scary then'."
She also discovered that approximately 30 per cent of people on transplant lists die before receiving a life-saving transplant.
She underwent an MRI in Moncton and to Toronto for a final round of testing last month.
“You can find good in everything, so that’s what I’ve been doing,” she said. “I wouldn’t say anything yet has been a sacrifice. I was exhausted as a healthy adult. I can’t imagine what they go through every single day doing all this. It just breaks my heart.”
Doyle will use her sick time benefits while away from her job at the federal government’s catch certification office in Tignish.
Word spread when her sister started a lottery in support of her expenses. Doyle said she was reluctant to accept help for something she signed up for voluntarily, but said she deeply appreciates the support.
Now, Doyle said she is OK with maybe never learning who receives a section of her liver. She will get to leave a letter for the recipient with the transplant team, and the recipient will be able to write her a letter, but the transplant team will remove any information that might reveal the identity of the writers.
Like Clements, Doyle is hoping that, by sharing her story others will consider signing up to be organ donors. She has already provided sign up information to three people who have requested it.
“To me, it’s such a small piece of my life for someone’s whole life."
What’s required of donors:
- be in excellent physical and psychological health;
- be between the ages of 18 and 55 years;
- have a compatible blood type with the recipient;
- come forward to donate voluntarily;
- be a healthy weight and about the same physical size (or larger)
