Castlegar teen hopeful 2020 will bring him kidney he needs
Credit to Author: Gordon McIntyre| Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2020 01:37:40 +0000
After going from soaring hope to crushing disappointment in one day a couple of years ago, Zachary Tremblay is still waiting for a new kidney.
The surgery to transplant a kidney that a friend of his mom’s had donated went wrong on June 1, 2017, and instead of waking up to start life afresh, the now-16-year-old was back waiting again, one of 600 people in B.C. who are also on the list for a kidney.
“What should have been a fairly routine four-hour surgery lasted about eight hours,” Jana Tremblay, Zach’s mom, said over the phone from Castlegar of her son’s initial and failed transplant. “They finally came and found my husband and me to tell us that a technical error had been made during the surgery and it cut off the blood flow to the (donated) kidney.”
Two more surgeries were performed overnight trying to save the kidney. When a test the next morning showed the kidney was not functioning, Zach required a fourth operation within 24 hours to remove the failed organ.
Doctors at B.C. Children’s Hospital never elaborated beyond say it was a technical error, Jana said.
“It wasn’t rejection, it was their error. Even two years later …” she said, her voice trailing off as emotion overtook her.
“They failed him.”
A spokeswoman for Pacific Health Services Authority said she could provide no further information immediately, but that such a case is exceedingly rare.
Zachary Tremblay and his mom Jana.
Zach was born with renal hypoplasia-dysplasia, which means his kidneys would be underdeveloped or misshapen. The condition was controllable with medication until he hit puberty and he’s been on dialysis since.
Complicating things is that he has a rare O-negative blood type.
The kidney he’d had transplanted in 2017 had been donated by Donna Middleton, Jana’s friend from Stanley Humphries Secondary, the high school Zach attends today. Having her kidney in him for those 24 hours, unfortunately, created antibodies that make it harder to find a suitable donor today.
Zach’s dialysis treatments have gone from 10 hours to 14 hours a day, and he needs to take a couple of dozen pills daily.
He’ll turn 17 in March and has had to quit playing the sports he loves, like basketball. He got seriously ill in September with pneumonia and wound up on life-support in hospital for most of the month.
“It’s changed things for him a lot,” Jana said. “If we could just get the right set of eyes on his story, find his match …”
There are 1.5 million donors registered in the B.C. Organ Donor Registry and 303 people received kidney transplants in the first 11 months of 2019, according to the most recent statistics from Transplant B.C.
Jana has set up a Facebook page in hopes of attracting a suitable donor, called Zach Needs a Kidney … Like Yesterday.
Zach keeps his spirits up as much as possible, his mom said.
“He does for the most part remain positive, but it’s scary for him. He’s afraid.
“If we can speed things up by telling his story and get people to call in and ask specifically to be tested for Zach, hopefully one of them will match.”