‘I’m not a person who wants to die yet’: GTA man makes appeal to find living liver donor

Arch Walsh is on the waitlist for a liver transplant and has been sitting next to his phone for the past 11 months waiting for a phone call from Toronto General Hospital.

Walsh was diagnosed with Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis in January 2016 and his doctors said he had just months live unless he found an organ donor.

“The diagnosis was not good. I was told to get my papers in order and to make preparations,” Walsh said.

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Walsh’s son, Doug, said this isn’t the first time his family has been faced with the organ donation waiting list.

“My mother also passed away who required a double lung transplant,” Doug said.

“This is our second time going through something like this and it kind of rips the band aide off and brings up some old wounds. I don’t want to lose my dad this way.”

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Walsh made an appeal over social media, asking anyone interested in becoming a live donor to come forward.

“I’m not a person who wants to die yet. I still have a full life to live and so we have been working diligently to find a living donor,” Walsh said.

“All I need is one person to come forward. If you have O+ or 0– blood type, then I can accept that blood type.”

James Breckenridge, president and CEO of Canadian Transplant Society said there isn’t enough education around the procedure of live organ donation.

“The reason it’s very important to become a live donor is because we don’t have enough people who are registering to become organ donors when they pass away,” he said.

“It’s about one every three days that we lose somebody and that shouldn’t be. There is no reason for people not to become organ donors.”

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Breckenridge said in live liver donations, up to 60 per cent of the donor’s liver.

“You only need about 10 to 20 per cent of your liver to survive,” he said.

“If they take 60 per cent … that liver will grow and your liver will grow back in three to six months.”

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The Walsh family is encouraging anyone interested in becoming an organ donor to learn more at http://www.uhn.ca/MOT.