One winter day, Élise Desaulniers had an appointment at the hospital to donate a kidney.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
“Is it indiscreet to ask if you’re doing it for someone you know?” he was asked.
– No not at all. I don’t know anything about the receiver. Just that he’s probably getting a new kidney today. »
It is therefore the not trivial story of a woman who, a few months ago, decided to donate a kidney to a stranger.
Élise Desaulniers winces, uncomfortable with the way I summarize her story. The expression “not trivial” raises her eyebrows.
The 47-year-old woman, who we know as an author and executive director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), does not want her gesture to be glorified.
It bothers me to talk about it. When I write a book, I am proud of myself and I say to myself: ‟Go! I will go to the media to defend my book. ” Same thing if it is a project for the SPCA. But there… It’s really banal! I’ve never given birth, but I think giving birth is a bigger physical challenge than donating a kidney!
Elise Desaulniers
If she decided to overcome her embarrassment and talk about it publicly, on the occasion of National Organ and Tissue Donation Week, it is because this type of living donation remains little known. Around her, her colleagues told her: “We have never heard of it! ” And for good reason. This kind of altruistic donation, long considered suspect, remains extremely rare. In Canada, there are only about thirty such undirected donations each year, including a handful in Quebec.
“I’m talking about it for that and not to be elevated to the rank of heroine! I didn’t pull someone out of a fire or jump into freezing water to save someone from drowning! I just accepted hidden numbers on my phone a couple of times. I went to wait in the CHUM waiting rooms. And I was hospitalized for two nights. It’s really nothing! »
Last year, when writing a column about a transplant and love affair – a man who had donated a kidney to his lover – I was told in passing that sometimes altruistic donors come forward1.
The thing intrigued me. Who gets up one morning and says to himself: “I am going to donate my kidney to a stranger”?
Who ? People like Élise Desaulniers, who publishes this Monday on the New Project website a very instructive text demystifying her experience2.
It all started for her a little over a year ago when she saw a message on Facebook from a man looking for a kidney. She had already vaguely heard about living donation about fifteen years ago through an Ontario colleague who had donated a kidney to a stranger. He was told at the time that the insurer had refused to compensate the colleague in question, citing the fact that it was a voluntary surgery. We didn’t want to set a precedent. If we compensated him, we would have to compensate everyone who did the same thing… The thing had made people laugh around the coffee machine. As if everyone was going to rush to offer a kidney to a stranger!
The matter remained there. Until this Facebook post from a man desperate for a kidney in the midst of a pandemic stirred something inside her.
Élise Desaulniers said to herself spontaneously: “It could be me! She had been training every day for a year. She was in great shape, a condition sine qua non to be able to donate a kidney. What if she could, by making a gesture of solidarity, save a life?
I do campaigns for the SPCA. I’m trying to change the world just a little bit. But it’s still very abstract. There, I could do something very concrete for someone.
Elise Desaulniers
She did not want to respond directly to the message on Facebook. “I said to myself: why this person who was chosen by the algorithm rather than another who might need it even more? »
She therefore decided to trust the system to properly direct her donation. She emailed the University of Montreal Hospital Center (CHUM) and the Kidney Foundation to find out if she could donate a kidney anonymously.
No way for her to get in touch with the receiver. “I didn’t want this person to feel like they owed me anything. For me, it’s like receiving a blood donation. We have no connection with the person who donated. It’s the same for my friend Mai Duong [dont j’ai déjà raconté l’histoire] who had a stem cell transplant. She doesn’t know where the cord came from that saved her. »3
Before embarking on this adventure, Élise Desaulniers could hardly have located the kidneys in her body. When her old cat died of kidney failure, she started reading about kidney function in both cats and humans. She realized how painful and common kidney failure is – one in ten people in Canada have it. If the transplant saves lives, the demand is much greater than the supply. The waiting lists of patients waiting for a transplant are getting longer.
“It happened at the same time as the message on Facebook. All this put together made me want to act. »
Once her decision was made, she had to pass a battery of physical and psychological tests to qualify as a donor. Throughout the process, the risks were clearly explained to him. No pressure was put on him. She was told again that she could withdraw her consent at any time. He was told that his lonely kidney was going to compensate by working a little harder. If she maintained a balanced lifestyle, she could live healthy for a very long time. As for the risks of the operation, they were greater than for a vaginal delivery, but no more than for a caesarean section or liposuction.
The further she went through the process, the more certain she was that this was the right thing to do. A season of discomfort to give someone back some freedom didn’t seem like a big sacrifice.
A season later, when she resumed training, she has no regrets, quite the contrary. She tells me what generous people often say: basically, this gift is above all a gift that she made to herself.
“I don’t know how it changed the life of the person who received it. But for me, it gave a semblance of meaning to my life. I still have the impression of having been used for something for real. »
Her gesture of solidarity comes to attenuate in her a feeling of powerlessness which has been accentuated during the pandemic. “We have a lot of depressing things around us. The IPCC report, the war in Ukraine… We can make an endless list. I try to make the world fairer. Are we really going to get there? I do not know. But at least there’s a little something I got a kick out of. »
A little something, she said. A little nothing…
The kind of nothing that can save a life.