'I gave her 29 years,' donor says of Canada's first kidney transplantby MIKE BOONE
Saturday, October 18, 2008
We all know, from watching ER and House, that organ transplants are not routine medical procedures.
The multi-organ transplantation program at the McGill University Health Centre does more than 150 kidney, liver, pancreas and heart transplants per year.
But as Dr. John Dossetor told guests at a $450-a-plate MUHC gala at Le Windsor last night, transplants were a lot trickier in 1958. Dossetor was head of a team that performed the first kidney transplant in Canada - indeed, the first in the British Commonwealth - 50 years ago at the Royal Victoria hospital.
"It had been done twice in the U.S. and nowhere else in the world," Dossetor, who's 83 and has been retired since 1992, told me. "This was very early in the days of transplantation. It was even before there were drugs to suppress rejection.
"One fact had been established: identical twins would accept tissue from each other. Everyone else, even fraternal twins, would reject tissue."
Also in attendance last night was Nola Johnson. Currently residing in Ottawa, she was a 15-year-old living in Baie d'Urfé when Moira, her twin sister, was stricken by life-threatening kidney disease.
When we spoke by phone last week, Johnson said she remembered "seeing something in the Montreal Star about the transplant that had been done in Boston."
"I volunteered right away," she said. "My mother didn't even have to ask me.
"We didn't dwell on how I was going to live with one kidney. We were concerned with my sister."
She was a brave girl. But Nola Johnson knew her sister's life was in the balance, so there was no hesitation.
"The procedure could only be done with identical twins," Johnson recalled. "We had to go through all kinds of tests to establish we were identical."
The twins grew up dressing alike and, Johnson says, "doing everything together." They were students at Macdonald High School when Moira became ill in March. The surgery was on May 14.
"I was slightly apprehensive," Johnson admits, "but mainly worried about Moira, not overly about myself."
When she became ill, Moira Johnson had been admitted to the Montreal Neurological Institute. That was where the story took a life-saving turn.
"The resident taking the history from the mother discovered Moira had an identical twin," Dossetor said. "The resident remarked on that to me, because I had been burbling away about the great things that had happened in Boston.
"We got quite excited about the possibility of a kidney donation."
The Royal Vic offered to pick up the tab, in those pre-medicare days, for sending the Johnsons to Boston for the surgery. But the family insisted on being treated in Montreal - by doctors who had never done a kidney transplant.
The age of the prospective donor was an issue. A family court judge interviewed Nola Johnson and ruled although a minor, she could consent to a procedure that could save her sister's life.
"The big ethical dilemma," Dossetor said, "was how long the donor would live, having given a kidney to her sister. We didn't know the answer."
Nola Johnson was at the Vic for 10 days. Her sister spent six weeks in the hospital and then continued to recuperate at home through the summer.
"We had to give up contact sports," Johnson said. "We'd played girls hockey and had grown up horseback riding on a farm. We had to be careful, but apart from that I could live with one kidney as well as (with) two."
The girls missed enough school in 1958 that they had to repeat Grade 10. Moira made a full recovery, but had a relapse in 1974 and went on dialysis. She lost a seven-year battle with breast cancer in 1987. Neither twin ever married.
"We didn't talk about (the kidney donation) much," Johnson says. "But I knew Moira was grateful.
"I gave her 29 years," Johnson says. "And I would do it all over again if I had to."
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=ec683730-0446-461b-b052-e58a09d94c0b
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