The director of a small Ottawa theatre company says she made her best casting pick ever in a man who would ultimately deliver more than a few lines.
Peter Veale ended up standing in as her kidney donor when the first anonymous donor backed out.
It's just been a little over a month since Helen Weeden's transplant and she's still clearly weak from the surgery. But she is far healthier than she's been in years, after diabetes destroyed her kidneys, forcing her to consider a transplant as her only option.
Without it, she says, “I guess I would pass away.”
That's a tough admission for a tough woman, who has spent her life in theatre, directing people and taking charge.
It's was as part of her theatre work with the Rural Root Theatre Company that Helen Weeden would meet the ultimate stand-in for a surgery that was to take place this past June.
An anonymous donor had come forward for a paired exchange, where Helen's husband Martin was to donate a kidney as well.
“Here I am lying on a gurney outside the operating room,” explains Martin Weeden, “when everyone got quiet and the doctor had to come out and say to me, that the donor had backed out. That was the morning of. I then had the not enviable task of telling Helen.”
That was just two hours before Helen was to get her life-saving kidney.
“My reaction was, well, I was just stunned,” recalls Helen, “I couldn't even…”
That's when Peter Veale stepped in. It was Helen who had introduced Peter to the theatre. It changed his life. He was about to change hers.
“This was very much a thank you for all you've done for my family and me,” Veale tells Helen, as he comes to visit the Weedens at their Carp home.
Veale had met Helen years earlier, when his son was interested in acting and had auditioned for a few shows. Veale recalls Helen walking up to both of them in a church basement and asking his son whether he would consider trying out for a much bigger show, then turning to Peter and saying, “And we need middle aged men as well.”
Veale’s reaction? “What do you mean middle-aged?” But he tried out and caught the acting bug. So did his entire family and the theatre became their extended family. Several months ago, when he saw Helen’s health declining, he decided to get tested to see about donating to the organ program. He expected to go into the paired exchange program.
“Lo and behold, I ended up being her match,” he says.
So, on November 9th, after multiple tests, and finding out he was a good match, Peter gave Helen the ultimate Christmas gift: one of his kidneys.
“I mean, to me that was the best casting call I ever made in my life,” says Helen, “because it changed my life.”
Once she's stronger, Helen plans to write a play about her experience
“I want to make it a humorous, a public awareness kind of play but with a message to donate, please donate.”
Will Peter play a role in it?
“If I get the starring role, yeah I’d do it,” he says.
He'll have to audition, of course. This director isn't cuttin' anyone any slack.
