FERGUS – A local man’s long wait for a kidney transplant ended after a donor turned out to be a perfect match in more than just marriage.
Les Hunter, known locally as a former president of the Fergus Curling Club, has been dealing with kidney failure stemming from a hereditary condition. But he will be seeing better days after getting a transplant on March 25, courtesy of his wife Shelly Hunter.
Les’ daughter Emily Hunter explained her 60-year-old father has polycystic kidney disease (PKD), an inherited disease which causes kidney function to decline. Les’ father died from the disease at the age of 67 and one of their sons has it as well.
Emily said her father has been on home dialysis for the past five years.
Dialysis is a process where a machine cleans a person’s blood and removes extra fluids often in place of kidneys.
“He has pretty much zero per cent kidney function, he has kidney failure they don’t work,” Emily said, referring to her father before the transplant. “The life expectancy of someone on home dialysis is about five years.”
Les said in an interview the realization that he couldn’t really live his life due to having to do two and a half hours of dialysis five times a week took a mental toll.
“I can sit and watch TV and everything but it really controls your life, you can’t do what you want to do, you’re just bound to this machine,” Les said. “Travel is out of the question, I was able to sneak away for a weekend here and there because I’m allowed two days off but that’s about it.”
Les had been on the transplant list just as long as he’d been on home dialysis, five years, but Shelly said average wait times are usually longer than that and many people end up dying on the waiting list.
Emily said it is much faster if you have your own living donor and even if they aren’t a match for that person, they could be for someone else and it would move the other person up the transplant list.
But it turned out his wife was a perfect match, which Shelly said was rare for a non-blood relative.
After a long process and COVID delays, Les received a kidney from his wife at Toronto General Hospital on March 25.
Les said he’s definitely feeling sore but feeling better than he did prior to the transplant.
“But the difference from before I had the kidney to now, it’s almost a night and day thing in terms of my energy,” Les said.
While Shelly said she was also in some pain after the surgery, she’s of course happy to help her husband live a longer life.
“We will be enjoying life, believe me,” Shelly said, adding the home dialysis machine is being returned.
Les said he’s very much looking forward to this summer and getting out to his family cottage.
“It’s definitely an emotional thing, being so limited and now coming to the realization that I’m going to be able to do just about anything I want,” Les said. “People take that for granted, and I did for many years too.”
He said he was very thankful for what his wife has given him and encouraged people to register as an organ donor as there are a lot of people he saw at Toronto General Hospital in the same boat he was or worse.
Their daughter also stressed the importance of awareness around organ donation but also how being a living donor can save a life like her father's.
“There’s so many people that don’t even know you can have just one kidney,” Emily said.
