Organ donation becoming more popular in Saskatchewan, but more donors still needed

Logan Boulet, a 21-year-old defenceman with the Humboldt Broncos hockey team, was among the 16 people killed when the team’s bus collided with a semi on a Saskatchewan highway eight years ago.

But after his own life ended on April 7, 2018, Boulet managed to save the lives of six other people through organ donation. Since the crash, the date has been marked as Green Shirt Day in Saskatchewan in order to encourage others to follow Boulet’s example by making the decision to become a donor.

Read more:

• Green Shirt Day continues Humboldt legacy of saving lives
• Progress on Humboldt Broncos memorial continues eight years after crash
• Humboldt father says Netflix hockey series ‘turns my stomach’

Lindy Brown, a donor co-ordinator with the Saskatchewan Organ and Tissue Donation Program and Kim Berscheid, an educator with the Saskatchewan Transplant Program, joined The Evan Bray Show on Tuesday to discuss the uptick in donors they’ve seen since the first Green Shirt Day and why it’s important for everyone to make their wishes around organ donation known to their families.

Berscheid and Brown said they’ve seen an increase in donations since the 2018 crash, but noted that more donors are still needed as many Canadians are still awaiting organ transplants and other life-changing donations.

Listen to the full interview with Brown and Berscheid, or read the transcript below:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: How big is the need for organ and tissue donors across Canada as it stands right now?

LINDY BROWN: Thank you for focusing on this topic today. It really is such an important conversation to have, so thanks for taking the time and the space to have this discussion. The need for organ and tissue donation is just huge across the country, and locally in Saskatchewan as well. There’s about 4,500 Canadians who are waiting for that life-saving transplant and hundreds of those will actually pass away while still on the wait list, unfortunately. So there’s around 100 people in Saskatchewan waiting for that life-saving kidney, and hundreds who are waiting for a surgery involving ocular tissue – that is the corneas or the sclera, including vision-restoring surgery – so that completely changes somebody’s life when they can restore their vision, so the wait list is long. We’re doing a really great job of increasing awareness of organ and tissue donation, but the need still does outweigh the availability, so it’s a huge, important, life-saving conversation, I think.

Often people are there intrigued, but maybe don’t completely understand the process, even the criteria, that is needed. What the what are the criteria someone has to meet to become a donor?

KIM BERSCHEID: In Saskatchewan, we are able to offer both deceased donation, the tissue donation, and the living kidney donation. So to be a living kidney donor, you can go to GiveLifeSask.ca, and you can register your intent there. There’s also a phone number you can call and we rule out things like active cancer, if you actively have diabetes, and some screening questions. But, relatively, if you’re younger and you’re relatively healthy, you’d be able to successfully donate your kidney to somebody. Maybe you know somebody on the wait list, or it could be anonymously, like an altruistic donor across Canada. It truly is incredible.

We had Logan Boulet’s dad Toby on the show this morning. He’s become quite an advocate for organ donation, and he talked about kidney donation and was talking knowledgeably about the fact that you don’t need two kidneys to live. In fact, you can live off half of a kidney, and he really was promoting that living donor program. Are we seeing more people, Kim, stepping up and becoming living donors?

BERSCHEID: Yeah, definitely. So the advocacy work we’re doing is really improving, however, like Lindy had so eloquently said, unfortunately the numbers that were increasing still aren’t quite meeting the demand, so there’s always more work to be done, and that’s when it’s so important to dig deep and decide if this is something that you would like to to do. You can change somebody’s life. Or even having that conversation with your family, registering your intent if you’re unable to make that decision for yourself, it’s life changing.

Lindy, what are the differences between those two programs?

BROWN: Myself and my team here, we work with the families of patients who are passing away or who have passed away. After all life-saving efforts have been exhausted and the end of life is coming, we work with those families when they have made a full, informed consent and decided that ocular tissue or organ donation is what is right for them and their loved one. So we work with the donor families and either offer that eye tissue donation or help co-ordinate the organ donation across the country, arrange the operating room, support the family and find matches for all of those organs. Kim, with the transplant program, she works with the living kidney donation program and works with the recipients of those kidney transplants in pre- and post-op care.

It is such an important thing, talking about organ donation, and is something that we highlight on a day like today, where, because of the advocacy work of Logan Boulet’s family, Green Shirt Day has become an effect. Have we seen the impact that has had? Do you see a tangible difference as a result?

BROWN: Yeah, definitely. Having those conversations is so important, and the topic of of death and passing away can be quite hard to have in conversations, so it’s just encouraging people. It’s not a dark topic. It’s a hopeful and inspiring topic. Life is unexpected and tragedies do happen when we’re not prepared for it, so it’s important to tell your family your own wishes and also what their wishes are, so that when that time of grief is happening and everything is uncertain and unsure, your family can know, or you can know exactly what the hope of your loved one was, so they feel prepared, and in those last hours and minutes together, they feel certain that they are following through with the legacy that you are hoping to leave behind – one last selfless and generous gift that these donors are able to offer. So the numbers, for sure, they are improving. These advocacy conversations are so important. When we go and speak with a family, sometimes, even if they haven’t registered, they just know ‘Oh, this is something that my loved one would have wanted,’ or they’ve expressed interest already. Those conversations are being had, and it’s just so impactful.

There was a text on the text line saying ‘I don’t think you get those stickers anymore that you put on your licence. They don’t do that program anymore.’ Is it all about going online to register now?

BROWN: If you have a sticker on your health card or driver’s licence, that’s great. It can stay there. It still holds power to show what your intention was, but they aren’t sending them out anymore. They won’t replace it if you lose them or if they fall off. It’s all moved to GiveLifeSask.ca for an online registry that registration is your intention and your desire for organ or tissue donation. It’s not full consent, so if something tragic were to happen or at end of your life, a co-ordinator from our team will speak with the family and the next of kin to be sure what the wishes were, and would then get full, informed consent. So you are encouraged to register. I encourage you to have conversation with your family, and that is really the most important part. We’re able to go to that registry to bring clarity to your family, so we can show somebody was interested or maybe was not interested, and that can just bring certain and clarity to the family member at that time.

So we know there’s a number of people in Saskatchewan waiting for a kidney. Kim, can you talk about what that weight, what that day to day life is like for them, and what change happens when they get that donor match?

BERSCHEID: Often our patients that are waiting for a kidney transplant are receiving dialysis, so that could be at home every day or every other day. A lot of our patients, though, have to travel to a dialysis center. So in a very rural province, a lot of our patients are having to actually relocate permanently to Saskatoon from the north or from the south to get their ongoing, life-saving dialysis treatment. So if we’re able to save somebody from going on dialysis by getting a living kidney, or help them get off the dialysis treatment, that’s really what we’re trying to do. The live kidney donation is the best treatment option for a lot of people. And after the transplant, the recipients have like the best outcomes with that. There’s a lot of criteria that we look like that we look at to make sure that it’s completely safe for the donor to be giving up one of those kidneys. And honestly, on the recipient side, they do so well and it truly is life changing for them.

I can’t imagine how rewarding the work is when you get to talk to families who have had a loved one saved by or their life completely changed through a donation. And I think Lindy, you mentioned you have an example of that?

BROWN: Yeah, I would love to read just a short reflection experience from one of the families who went forward with organ donation for their loved one. It reads like this: “Our son’s passing taught us that the best time to share your wishes is right now. While our hearts were full of unanswered questions about his accident, we were spared the most agonizing one – what would he have wanted? – because he had clearly shared his wishes. We didn’t spend our darkest hours in debate. We didn’t have to guess. We simply had to honor the beautiful choice he had already made. That clarity lifted a massive weight from our hearts, giving us the space to simply be with him in his final hours, when we felt we didn’t have the strength to see the process through. We looked to his legacy. We focused on his wish to honor the man we love so deeply. Organ donation offered a sliver of light, the possibility that his final act could grant someone else the life he was leaving behind. It was the ultimate expression of his character, kind, giving and selfless. It was a way to find meaning in the midst of such deep pain. Our son, brother, husband and father was endlessly funny, immensely talented and a soul that will be forever missed. He was a hero to us every day. Now he is a hero to five other families who have been given a second chance at life.”