Taber rallies to help councillor who needs liver transplant
Jack Brewin desperately needs a new liver, but the 50-year-old Taber town councillor is struggling to find a donor who is the right match.
"I'm sure hoping that something will come through soon," said Brewin, who was diagnosed last year with an auto immune disease that is attacking his liver.
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"I have some really good days and then I have some days where I just don't want to do anything. I'm still able to function all right, but you never know how long it'll go."
A living donor is Brewin's best chance.
But it has been difficult finding someone with a liver that is the right size for Brewin, who is six-feet-four-inches tall.
His 24-year-old son Jordan didn't qualify.
But a number of volunteers have started a Facebook campaign called Find a Liver for Jack.
"The response has been so tremendously overwhelming," said Sharla Kane, one of the organizers of the campaign.
Jim Lawson, who used to run a ski shop in Lethbridge where Brewin was a customer, decided it was time to put a deposit in what he calls his "karma bank."
"To really help someone live a longer life and help them be around for their children and their grandchildren, that'd be pretty exciting," he said.
The liver has the unique ability to regenerate within six to eight weeks. In Alberta 22 living donor liver transplants were performed in 2015.
Lawson says he has been told he is not the best match for Brewin, but has decided to stay on the donor registry.
"I've got a job I can leave for month and not work. I'm in a situation where I've never really drank, never smoked, never done drugs, so I should be healthy. So, if not me then who?" said Lawson.
The campaign might also help others
"There's people out there that care. That's quite something," said Brewin.
But he still wishes more Albertans would sign up to be donors.
"If any good comes of this, maybe some people will realize how precious a gift they have inside of them that they can help other people." he said.
"We just don't have enough organs to go around."
Eighty-two people are on the waiting list for donors in Alberta, said Dr. James Shapiro, the head of the province's living donor liver transplant program.
"We know that up to a third will die while waiting for a transplant and it's an absolute tragedy," he said. "We just don't have enough organs to go around."
Shapiro applauds social media campaigns, like the one for Brewin, as they help highlight the need for organ donation.
However, he says it's important for people to understand that if they do come forward to make an anonymous donation, the liver is offered to the patient on the waiting list who is most in need.
"Organ donor rates in Alberta have been the worst in the country now for a while. They used to be the best in the country. And I'm not sure of all the factors that lie around that, but it's a problem," said Shapiro.
