This week marks Living Donation Week, which is all about honouring the people who have sacrificed parts of their lives and bodies to share the gift of life, while they are still living theirs.
Anne Halpin did just that. Halpin does not know where her kidney is now, but she hopes her donation gave someone their life back.
“I hope it’s peeing up a storm for somebody, giving somebody their life back, taking them off the dialysis, giving them the opportunity to travel and do the things that are hard to do when you’re on dialysis.”
Her donation journey started when her friend, Sean Delaney, needed a kidney transplant. Halpin has worked in a lab for more than 30 years with Alberta Health Services where they match people up for transplants, so she is not stranger to the process. But it was the push she needed to make the life-saving donation.
“He’d been transplanted about 20 years before that donation from his brother, but he needed another transplant,” Halpin said.
Halpin was not a match for Delaney, but thought she could help him through the paired donation program. She began the extensive medical testing needed to make a kidney donation, but before it could be completed, Delaney matched with someone else. He told her she was off the hook, but she was inspired to continue with the process.
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“I thought, you know, I made this big decision, I’ve almost finished all the extensive testing that you go through to make sure it’s safe for you to donate. I decided that I just didn’t want to be off the hook, that I really wanted to follow through with it and to donate as an anonymous or altruistic donor,” Halpin explained.
She continued with the testing. She had to do X-rays, blood work, CT scans and other tests to make sure she was healthy enough that donating her kidney would not be a risk to her. After the tests were completed, she was matched with someone in Canada. Just months later, she had the surgery.
“It’s a laparoscopic procedure, so I have some small incisions on my abdomen.”
Halpin went on to explain that her recovery was smooth, and she only spent one night in hospital. After three months, she was running and doing everything she normally would be.
“There’s absolutely no impact to my life right now. There’s nothing I can’t do. There’s nothing I do differently. I don’t feel any different. It makes me really happy when I think about it, but there’s been no physical consequence to me at all.”
Halpin said she was able to write to the recipient anonymously and they could write to her. She knows that they were doing well initially. She hopes that person is doing as well as her friend Delaney.
“I sort of feel connected to my friend in, you know, watching him get his life back, watching him hike and do all the things and chase northern lights whenever they’re around and do all the things that he gets to do now, that were hard for him before. And I hope that that other person is having the same positive experience.”
Halpin hopes her story may inspire someone else to “share their spare.”
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