I never thought I would ever be moved by a man who talks to me about paving stones. That day came this week when I met Philippe Caron.
Posted at 6:15 a.m.
It was his mother, Sylvie Morissette, who contacted me to tell me about her son. She wanted to talk to me about organ donation, not plain stone.
12 years ago, Mr.me Morissettte made what is called a “living donation”, she gave one of her kidneys to Philippe. Her son suffers from a birth condition – oligonephronia – which weakened his kidneys at a very young age. Already, when he was little, Philippe’s doctors saw dialysis in his adult future.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Sylvie Morissette
Sylvie: “When Philippe was 12-13 years old, he wanted to play football and he wanted to be a firefighter. A doctor had told me to prepare my son to never play football and never become a firefighter, because of his kidneys…”
Advance the VHS tape of Philippe Caron’s life to 2022: all his youth, he played football (up to the junior AAA level) and he is now a firefighter at the City of Montreal (barracks 16, opposite La Fontaine park) since 2013…
It was during his studies to become a firefighter that his kidneys failed. Philippe was 22 years old. He felt exhausted, for no reason, he the athlete. The kidneys were barely functioning.
He therefore had to be transplanted with a kidney. But the wait for a kidney from a deceased donor is 12 to 24 months, depending on blood type.
The wait for a living donation kidney is faster: approximately 10 months.
As a human being can live with only one kidney without any problem, Philippe’s parents, Sylvie and André, raised their hands to donate a kidney to their son. André was not compatible.
Sylvie was.
She’s the one who tells me all this, Philippe listens, at her side, he listens much more than he speaks, a man of few words. Sylvie gave the most beautiful gift to her son, 12 years ago, a kidney. It allowed Philippe to resume a normal life, to become a firefighter.
“After two months, she says, I had resumed my normal activities. But still, it scared me, it’s not as if you were pulling a tooth…”
Until then, it’s a great story to tell, the story of this organ donation, of a mother who literally gives a part of herself for her son. But now, Sylvie’s kidney, transplanted at Philippe’s, hardly works anymore, in 2022.
It’s no surprise: transplanted kidneys don’t live for decades. The immune system is a strange bug, especially in young people, rejections are almost inevitable: “It’s rare that it lasts a lifetime”, says the DD Lynne Sénécal, nephrologist at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, who performs transplants.
For a living donation, one can expect to live with the transplanted kidney for 18, even 20 years, according to the DD Senecal. But the younger the transplant recipient, the shorter the lifespan of the kidney…
Philippe Caron is therefore back to where he was in 2010: constantly tired, having to change his diet to spare his kidneys, which no longer function at 14%. Dialysis awaits. He is on sick leave. He has no more energy. He hopes for a living donation from someone around him, fingers crossed. Otherwise, it will be the waiting list for an organ from a deceased donor.
“That’s why I contacted you,” Sylvie Morissette told me. To talk about organ donation. If there were more organs, there would be less waiting. We want to find a solution, I am involved with the Kidney Foundation, we are inquiring about a cross-donation…”
Cross-gifting: if A and B are not compatible, maybe B is compatible with C, and C is perhaps compatible with A. This is how complete strangers are sometimes put in contact for cross donations. André, Philippe’s father, is ready to invest in a cross donation.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
philippe caron
I look at Philippe, 34, young father, he has three little guys with his girlfriend Clémentine. I dare not imagine what it must be like to be sent back to the locker room of life, to have to put everything on “pause”.
“Psychologically, how do you live with it? »
No answer. Philippe searches for his words.
Sylvie intervenes, after a few seconds, rubbing his back:
“Do you want me to go out? »
Phillip replies:
“It depends on the weeks. Psychologically, psychologically… Uh, psychologically…”
For a moment, I thought Philippe was trying to find his words. Except no, he kept repeating the word “psychologically” so as not to crack, because saying any other words would have broken him and, hey, who wants to cry in front of a stranger?
Sylvie took over the talking stick, told me of Philippe’s devotion to his family, how he built the family home, how he takes care of everyone: “He doesn’t want his children to lack whether it be. It is a pillar. »
And I thought, noting Sylvie’s words: cursed that life is a lottery; cursed that luck is not evenly distributed; Damn that luck is underestimated in people’s life trajectory…
Philippe started talking to me about his job as a firefighter at fire station 16, his dream fire station because it’s a fire — OK, sorry for the pun — rolling, every day, every week: “It’s is the kind of station where all firefighters who love action want to work, like 19, 25…”
The hardest thing is the wait, he says, it’s not knowing when he will be transplanted… When he becomes the vigorous guy he was, until very recently: “The house that I I built is still in renovation, there is still finishing to be done. I can’t do it, the finish, out of exhaustion…”
That’s when unistone came into the conversation.
Even with help, he says, it’s impossible to lay out the paving stones around the house. You know that pride of doing things yourself? To need no one, or almost?
Philippe Caron has lost that pride.
“Before, he says, I did it alone, the unistone. »
I wrote down Philippe Caron’s words in the computer, and there, it was I who no longer dared to speak, who no longer dared to say words…
A few days have passed and I can say these words: sign the little organ donation consent box on your health insurance cards, tabarslak.