UNNATI GANDHI
February 26, 2008
As a fleet of jets carrying Hollywood North types flocked to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, a true race-against-time thriller was unfolding off-screen.
The sudden death of a man in rural British Columbia last Thursday gave the B.C. Transplant Society mere hours to harvest the donor's healthy organs and get them to operating rooms in Vancouver.
So, just as it had done 23 times last year alone, B.C. Transplant went down its list of 11 jets-for-hire companies across the country and in the United States to charter a $15,000 flight to shuttle its organ-recovery surgeons to the remote locale and back.
Only this time, it wasn't going to be so simple.
"As a result of the Oscars going on in California, all of the corporate jets had been spoken for," said Bill Barrable, executive director of B.C. Transplant. "We were in a situation where we could not secure a jet in the tight time frame that we needed to."
Mr. Barrable said organs must be transplanted within four to six hours of being harvested, which also must be done relatively quickly for the organ to be functional in its new body.
Seven organs - and lives - were on the line.
Thinking on his feet, Mr. Barrable called his varsity football teammate from his undergraduate days at Queen's University and good friend Robert McFarlane, chief financial officer and vice-president of Telus Corp., at about 5 p.m. to see if the company could lend its corporate jet for a good cause.
Mr. McFarlane was not available last night, but a spokesman for the company said there was no hesitation.
Within an hour, the logistics were finalized and the Telus jet, at no charge, was on its way to Vancouver to pick up the team of surgeons.
Two lungs, two kidneys, a heart, a liver and a pancreas were successfully harvested and transplanted into seven recipients shortly after midnight.
Among them was Brian Parsons, a 43-year-old firefighter who said he is hopeful his new heart, which came just two weeks after he was placed on a waiting list, will help him get back to the active lifestyle he was forced to give up because of his enlarged heart.
"It was just one of those things where timing was not its best and all the jets not being available. ... I'm so grateful because I know the outcome could have been very different," the Vernon, B.C., resident said in an interview from his hospital room last night.
The other six recipients were also doing well, according to Mr. Barrable, who said B.C. Transplant has never had trouble chartering a jet before.
While statistics about the use of corporate jets aren't readily available, a spokesman for the National Business Aviation Association in Washington, D.C., said such a peak in demand for the industry's hundreds of corporate jets is extremely rare.
"There really are only a small number of dates where demand might be up," said Dan Hubbard. "We're talking about huge events like the Super Bowl."
While B.C. Transplant had 262 successful procedures last year, Mr. Barrable said it is uncommon to have so many organs available from a single donor.
A person has to be declared brain dead while on a ventilator to meet the medical criteria for organ donation, criteria so strict that only 1 per cent of deaths qualify, Mr. Barrable said.
And with one-third of Canadians dying while waiting for a transplant organ, it was crucial that B.C. Transplant get the organs back in time.
"It was a race against time, really," he said. "But talk about a happy ending."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080226.TRANSPLANTS26/TPStory/National
I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Author
