Few people are lucky enough to have even one person in their lives willing to give them an organ, but Dave Jansma has two.
Jansma’s sister Marianne donated part of her liver to him eight years ago after Dave developed primary sclerosing cholangitis. The disease causes the bile ducts in the liver to become blocked due to inflammation and ultimately leads to liver failure.
When Dave was diagnosed, he had only a six-month window during which he could receive a transplant. Fortunately, Marianne was a match and Dave received what was then only the 13th living donor transplant ever performed in B.C. and the first of the year in December 2006.
With liver transplants generally expected to last more than 25 years, Dave never expected to have go through the organ transplant process again so soon.
However, during the 2013 B.C. Day long weekend in August, Dave started to have trouble catching his breath.
“I had a cough, I had a hard time catching my breath,” Dave said. It was bad enough that he went to the emergency room to have doctors take a look at what was going on.
Not wanting to spend the night at the hospital, he went home to see if it would get better on its own.
Dave spent the next few months having a variety of tests and procedures performed but nothing helped.
“It’d get better, it’d get worse, it’d get better, worse,” he said.
In December 2013, fed up with a lack of results, Dave went back to the emergency room.
This time, he spent two weeks at West Coast General Hospital (WCGH) where he was put on an anti-inflammatory drug called prednisone. Unfortunately, the short-term length of the dose wasn’t enough to help much. Feeling slightly better, Dave was discharged from the hospital for two weeks until he started feeling worse.
“At the beginning of January, it hit me again.”
He was sent to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) for more testing.
It was then that Dave found out that his kidneys were failing. Earlier in 2013, he’d found out that his kidneys were functioning at 30 per cent, which is high enough to be asymptomatic.
However, on Jan. 15, 2014, his kidney function had fallen drastically enough to qualify as renal failure and he began dialysis.
“They still couldn’t nail down what was the cause of the respiratory issues,” Dave said.
“Or even the kidney issues,” his wife Colleen said. “Why did it go from 30 to zero so fast?”
Colleen felt a horrible sense of deja vu when an ambulance attendant told her Dave would need a kidney transplant.
“As soon as those world came out of her mouth it was just, oh, another one? That was horrible because that liver transplant was really hard.”
But even getting Dave on dialysis didn’t help much.
“His reactions post-dialysis were horrible,” she said, adding that post-dialysis “Dave looked like a wind could blow him over.”
It all came to a head one dialysis day in the spring of 2014. Dave underwent a bronchoscopy in the morning and then dialysis in the afternoon and finished the day looking so weak that Colleen was scared to take him home. But Dave insisted and went home, falling asleep quickly.
“Then a little while later he texted me from the bedroom” asking Colleen to call him an ambulance.
Dave was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs.
Tired of never seeing Dave getting better and worried that his lungs would fail before the NRGH team figured out the problem, Colleen insisted that he be transferred over to the transplant team at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH).
“This lung thing was ready to take him out, he was gasping for air. He couldn’t brush his teeth without taking breaks, he couldn’t eat.”
By the time Dave was taken to VGH, he was doing so poorly that Colleen wasn’t sure if she would see him again.
Fortunately, the VGH team worked quickly and within eight days of being there, Dave was diagnosed with chronic bronchiolitis due to his autoimmune issues.
“When you’re on anti-rejection meds, on immunosuppressants, it paints a different picture,” she said.
Within 24 hours of diagnosis, Dave was able to breathe again.
“I could talk to him on the phone and he wasn’t gasping,” Colleen said.
With Dave’s condition stabilized, he now needed a kidney donor.
His kidney donor, Allison Dupuis, entered into the picture almost by accident when a mutual friend of hers and the Jansmas mentioned that Dave needed a transplant.
“And that was the end of it for me,” said Depuis, who instantly asked for Dave’s blood type. They were both type O.
She didn’t say it out loud, but the thought that flashed through her mind was “I’m going to have to give him a kidney now.”
Then began the process of becoming a kidney donor, a process that wasn’t finalized until Friday, Oct. 24, less than two weeks before the transplant date on Monday, Nov. 3.
The process involved intensive medical and psychological testing to make sure that Depuis was suitable.
As a police officer, Depuis needed to ensure that she could work with only one kidney and that she could take the necessary time off to recover.
Depuis also ran the idea by her husband, Steve, “because he’s my spouse, he’s really along for the ride.”
“It’s just the way I’m wired. He needs, I have,” she said. “It wasn’t a conscious decision.”
It was more like a calling.
“I firmly believe that this was set in place long before, that this was the answer. Every single thing was in line, it’s God’s hand.”
The spiritual side has been hard for Depuis to explain to others but it’s the reason why the decision was so easy for her, she says.
And while she’s had the odd panicked moment, she’s never questioned her choice.
It’s a choice that Dave and Colleen will be thankful for forever, but the real reward for Depuis is how blessed she feels and how many people’s lives she’s been able to touch.
“For me the best way to thank me is to give God the glory that this is what love looks like… Jesus gave me his life, I can give a kidney.”
The Jansmas and Depuis are hoping that sharing Dave’s story will start a conversation here in Port Alberni.
“This is a community with a heart,” Colleen said.
As of Aug. 12, 2014, 473 people in B.C. are waiting for an organ transplant. Seventy-five per cent of those need kidneys and few will have family members who are a match, making living organ donations like Depuis’ all the more crucial. For more information, visit BC Transplant at www.transplant.bc.ca.
reporter@albernivalleynews.com
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