Lying in her Vancouver hospital bed after donating a kidney, Saanich’s Michelle Herritt could see the once desperately ill young man whose life she had just saved.
“Our hospital rooms were beside each other and so I did see him,” said Herritt, 56. “I saw his parents were there, and I saw him sitting on the side of his bed and he was just smiling and he just looked so well.”
It was a Hallmark movie moment.
Eric James, 37, who has lost generations of family members to a genetic form of kidney disease — including his mother and younger brother — was celebrating a future with his family. For the first time in five years, he felt alive.
That moment was enough for Herritt. After spending just two days in hospital, she’s now recovering at home.
She’ll meet James in Victoria when he, too, returns. Released from St. Paul’s Hospital and on high-dose steroids and anti-rejection medications, James must stay in Vancouver for three months.
James, who has a rare B+ blood type, was coming up on his fifth year of thrice-weekly dialysis treatments and experiencing mild congestive heart failure when, on Nov. 21, 2022, he made a public appeal for a donor.
Finally, a match
Many in Greater Victoria stepped forward, but some weren’t matches and others later backed out. Eventually, Herritt — who says she never once thought of backing out — was told her O+ blood produced antibodies that made her a perfect match.
“As soon as they connected the main artery of my kidney to him, it instantly started producing,” said Herritt, a married mother of a 25-year-old son.
It was during a routine doctor’s visit in July 2017 that James, a former Royal Canadian Navy maritime warfare officer, learned he had a genetic syndrome that had afflicted generations of his family with kidney disease. “I went into the base hospital in Esquimalt and they checked my blood pressure and I’ll never forget seeing the look on the doctor’s face … she said according to my blood pressure, I should be a puddle on the ground,” he said.
That afternoon, the diagnosis was confirmed. By 2019, he required dialysis.
“I had thought I was out of the woods — most of the people in my family who were getting diagnosed were in their 20s, and at the time I was in my 30s and very fit and healthy,” he said.
James’ great-grandfather died of kidney failure before dialysis made its way to Northern Ontario. His grandmother received two kidney transplants prior to the debut of anti-rejection medications and despite spending her life on a machine, she, too, died.
His mother got 20 years out of a cadaver kidney before it began failing. She might have carried on if not for the 2021 death of her 30-year-old son, who died just two years after his diagnosis and transplant. She lived with the knowledge that she had passed her illness on to her sons.
“My brother’s death was a final blow and she died of a literal broken heart two weeks after my brother,” said James.
Immediately following his Feb. 28 transplant, the first thing James noticed was how alive and energetic he felt: “I never even realized how cold my hands used to be, and my hands are warm now. I touch my hands and I feel like a living person now.
“If it weren’t for this incision I have, which is sore, I’d be doing cartwheels down the hallway right now.
“You forget when you’re sick for so long … I didn’t remember what healthy felt like.”
James, who is on short-term disability benefits from B.C. Transit, where he works as a bus driver, met his girlfriend just after starting dialysis.
“It sounds so cliché, but I have a life now,” said James. “I was living from day to day on that machine.”
Herritt, a quality management analyst for Island Health who monitors cardiac events in the health authority, said despite a bit of discomfort, for which she is taking twice-daily Tylenol, she, too, feels renewed.
She doesn’t imagine she’ll do anything more significant during her time on Earth: “It’s definitely top of my life list so far.”
For Herritt, becoming a live organ donor was not a bucket-list item. She read James’ story and imagined if it was her husband or son who was spending about 40 hours weekly on dialysis and whose life depended on the kindness of a stranger.
Living organ donations, managed through Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital pre-assessment transplant clinics, hit a record 77 last year over the previous record of 66 in 2021.
Herritt underwent 13 months of testing, mostly in Vancouver, including lots of blood tests, before the transplant. “Canada has the most strict requirements and Canada has the highest success rate,” she said.
The procedure, however, was simple, leaving just two laparoscopic incisions and one to remove the kidney, about the size of an adult fist. Island Health covered six weeks’ paid leave and the rest of her time off she is covering with accumulated sick days, though there are other programs available to cover costs for donors.
Herritt said the hardest question she is asked is why she did it. The answer, she said, is just because she could.
‘Right thing to do’
“There just was no question in my mind that this was the right thing to do,” said Merritt. “And I just know that I’ve made the best moral decision because I do feel so good about this.”
Also, Herritt’s experience in Island Health gave her enormous trust in the health-care system, she said. “I see the good people that are taking care of our population.”
James said his call for a kidney has saved his own life, but possibly many more. “I have been told a few people from Victoria stepped forward — there have been a few kidneys that have come out of my call and they carried on with it,” said James. “My plan is to keep that going. I want more people to come forward and I want to change more people’s lives.”
B.C. Transplant said 512 people are waiting for an organ transplant in B.C. Adults can donate to someone they know or not and do so anonymously.
“I am glad I have this kidney but I have many friends on that unit who are still there and I want their lives to change too,” he said. “They have a different face and a different name but their story is exactly the same as mine.”
James said to honour Herritt and show his gratitude, he will dedicate part of his life to campaigning for others to donate.
• Register as an organ donor at www.taketwominutes.ca
