An Ottawa man who had taken his search for a new kidney to the Internet after being told he was running out of time has just found out there is a match.
Craig Dunbar learned Thursday that a living donor was found after six years of searching.
“It means a second chance of life really, things have been getting pretty desperate lately,” said Dunbar. “This means the dialysis stops, this means that pretty much I get my life back and start moving forward.”
The woman, whose name is not being released right now, is a family friend of Dunbar’s. She is not a perfect match so there are challenges but “knowing that, we can go into the surgery planning ahead…I would require two to three weeks of pre-treatment with the anti-rejection drugs and a couple of additional treatments that you wouldn't have with a transplant,” Dunbar said.
Dunbar was diagnosed with renal failure in 2007. In 2012, he was told the fistula, or access he used for dialysis, would fail within the year.
According to the Trillium Gift of Life Network, a record-breaking 1,053 life-saving organ transplants were performed in Ontario last year. That's an 11 per cent increase over the previous year. Despite that, the network says lives are being lost because just 23 per cent of Ontarians are registered donors.
“If there were more people signing their consent for donation the need for living donors wouldn't be as high,” Dunbar said.
So, he turned to social media before he ran out of time and started Kidney4Craig.com to ramp up his search.
“I need to thank my donor specifically. For her to be going through all this is just phenominal.”
His wife, Heather, is thankful too.
“You have no idea the difference that it has made in both of our lives,” she said.
With a report from CTV’s Katie Griffin
