By Shauna Mazenes
Christine Bruce's decision to donate a kidney started with an email.
It was a choice anchored in a lot of reflection, but she considers it one of the best she has ever made.
"That's one person who's got a better life now. Not just them, but their entire family," says Christine, Senior Director of Laboratory Medicine at UHN, who made the donation to an anonymous recipient earlier this year.
"Their lives are forever changed, and I feel pretty good about being in a position to do that."
Sept. 8 to 14 marks Living Donation Week in Canada. According to the Canadian Blood Services, there are more than 4000 Canadians waiting for an organ transplant. Of those, an estimated 3000 are waiting for a kidney. Each year, 250 people die while waiting.
"Transplantation transforms people's lives," says Dr. Deepali Kumar, Director of the Ajmera Transplant Program at UHN, which is one of the largest in North America.
"For those people, a transplant means freedom. It means the ability to contribute to society, to work, to go out and have fun — to do all the fantastic things that life is about."
The organ donation process is anonymous for both the donor and the recipient. Christine has chosen to come forward to share her story.
Not only has Christine given someone the gift of life, but she set an example about the true impact of giving back. She hopes the experience has shown her team that they can do big things, too.
"The sharing of what those gifts mean with others who don't understand is an important gift to give the system as well," says Christine. "I come from a place of knowing and lived experience, and sometimes that's all that's needed to help an individual make the choice to do the same."
And for Christine, it started in 2022 when she received a UHN all-users message in her inbox marking Living Donation Week. She filled out the application forms and set them aside. She would stare at those papers on her desk every day for six months before deciding to submit them.
Candice Coghlan, the Education & Outreach Coordinator for the
Centre for Living Organ Donation (CLOD) at UHN, says awareness is key. Many people don't know about living donation — even an email can prompt someone to learn more.
"There are so many heroes behind the scenes waiting to do these remarkable things but don't know they can," Candice says.
When asked why they decided to donate, people often say they found out it was possible to live a healthy life after giving a kidney or part of their liver, Candice says. That's why the crux of her work deals with dispelling myths about living organ donation and raising awareness for the cause.
"It always amazes me that we've had so many anonymous living donors step forward just from hearing about someone in need," she says.
Candice says anonymous donors such as Christine can create long chains of paired kidney matches that have the potential to impact many lives, just by that one person putting a kidney into the system.
And Candice knows firsthand how meaningful an organ donation is. After she was diagnosed with kidney failure in her early 20s, she was on dialysis until receiving a transplant from her mother.
It wasn't until then Candice was able to find a career path, get married and have a child — milestones she previously thought unachievable.
"A transplant doesn't just give us hope, it gives us our lives back," Candice says. "And for some of us, it gives us more than the life we had before."
That's what inspired Candice to get involved with UHN's CLOD.
"I have this second life, so why not give back to the community that helped me through it?" she says.
It's a sentiment Dr. Kumar has heard many times. She says that impact is what keeps the organ donation cycle going — as it did with Candice and Christine — for many donors and recipients who become linked to the cause for life.
"It's about the people you meet along the journey, the way they made you feel and how they transformed your life," says Dr. Kumar. "Once someone experiences that transformation, it truly becomes part of who they are.
"They become part of the transplant community forever."
For Christine, her moment came as she lay in the hospital bed recovering from the surgery.
She went from being a health care provider to being a patient. She saw the other side of the clinical work for which she's always advocated, and experienced UHN's transplant expertise firsthand.
Now, she wants others to know that UHN's primary value of putting patients first is not a slogan — it's a reality.
"I think it's important to let people know the kind of care they can get at UHN — not because I work here and I can tell you about it — because I lived it and felt it," says Christine.
"What we say we do and who we say we are is real. I experienced it.
"I've come out the other side in really good shape, and somebody else received a massive benefit."
