An Ottawa man who used social media to search for a kidney will get his life saving surgery today. After years of living with kidney failure Craig Dunbar will get the gift of life from a woman who saw his plea for help on CTV Ottawa.
For six and a half years, Craig Dunbar's reality involved being hooked up to a dialysis machine for hours at a time. The volunteer firefighter and community fundraiser was diagnosed with acute renal failure in 2007, with no apparent cause.
"This is six and a half years that I’ve been almost a slave to this machine,” says Dunbar, as he is connected to the dialysis machine at The Ottawa Hospital.
But the 41-year-old is finally being set free. Thursday, at noon, he undergoes a kidney transplant from a living donor.
"I've just got a new lease on life. if I just won the lottery it wouldn't feel like this.”
Dunbar's search for a donor became desperate last year when he found out the fistula, or access route for his dialysis was failing.
Through social media, Craig launched a world-wide search for a kidney, on Twitter (@kidney4craig) and Facebook. Ironically, his donor turned out to be the wife of his former sector chief at the Stittsville fire station who had seen Craig's appeal for help on CTV last year.
"When Craig was on the TV saying you know I don’t' have a year to live,” says Ann Gervais, from her home in Napanee, “ it made me think this is something Ii can do or try to do.” Gervais will travel tonight to the Ottawa Hospital in preparation for her part of the surgery.
Neither Dunbar nor Gervais are worried about the procedure.
“I’m too calm but that’s okay,” says Dunbar.
The head of the kidney transplant program at the Ottawa Hospital says they shouldn't be; the success rate is good, even when the match isn't perfect, as in this case.
"Even today in our unmatched donor and recipient pairs,” says Dr. Greg Knoll, “our rejection rates are very low, under 10 percent now.”
Dunbar is already visualizing his recovery, hoping to get back to even the most mundane of tasks, even cutting the grass.
“So my neighbors complain about cutting grass,”, jokes Dunbar as he is prepped for his surgery, “Me? If I’m cutting the grass it means I’m on top of it, not below it so I’m pretty happy to cut the grass.”
Happy, too, to continue to spread the word about the importance of organ donation.
The Ottawa Hospital performs aboutseventy kidney transplants a year. The hospital is now at number 994 and will likely reach the one-thousand milestone in a few weeks’ time.