Illustration by Alex Siklos
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On May 7, 2024, I found the One. Or rather, the One found me. I’m not talking about a soulmate to ride off into the sunset with, I’m talking about an organ donor. That was the day I was told that a match had been found, and I was going to receive my life-saving liver transplant. For more than 12 years I had been living with a rare liver disease and for the past 11 months had been urgently searching for a living donor – some remarkable person willing to give me part of their liver so that I could survive.
The need for organs vastly exceeds the supply. Despite being on the transplant waitlist, my blood type and the nature of my disease meant that I was going to die on that list. My only hope was to find a match among the living. I wrote about my desperate situation in The Globe and Mail and I explained that there were no matches within my family or friends, so I had to go public. The vulnerability of asking strangers for an organ felt unbearable – but it was a choice between life or death.
My liver is turning to stone. I need a living donor, and soon
We launched my campaign in November, 2023, on social media hoping it would be widely shared, and it was. My donor, Trisha, who lives in the United States, saw my appeal after it was shared by someone she went to high school with 20 years ago. She reached out to say that she couldn’t stop thinking about my story, and in mid-March told me she had applied to be my donor.
To say I was skeptical is +an understatement. My first thought was: I need a donor here, in Canada. But she was my first real hope and I didn’t want to ask further questions. Here was this person with the same blood type and a willing spirit. We messaged a bit, and she told me she was coming to Toronto to undergo the next phase of testing. I was hesitant when she asked if I wanted to meet her when she was here. What if the testing ruled her out? What if she ultimately changed her mind? I didn’t want to get attached.
By April, my health had been rapidly declining for months and I was experiencing horrifying physical symptoms that would be the envy of nightmares, like spontaneous nosebleeds, jaundice and sever brain fog. I spent an entire week in the hospital’s transplant unit trying to get stabilized – the same week she was also there getting the final tests. She asked if I wanted updates, and I did – I desperately did – but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I was several floors up from her. I couldn’t put that kind of pressure on her shoulders.
If the doctors ruled her out as my donor, I didn’t want her feeling like she had failed me when I was at a critical juncture. On her last night in Toronto, she told me all the tests went well, and it looked very promising that we would get the green light for transplant. We just had to wait for the transplant team to meet and discuss my case the following week.
She again asked if I wanted to meet early the following day before her flight home. At that moment I realized even if she wasn’t the One, I had to meet her because she had come farther for me than anyone else. I told her things had gotten worse and I was in the hospital. When she came to my room the next morning, I was so nervous as I sat on the edge of the bed waiting. I peeked outside my room and saw her coming around the corner. Without hesitation, I rushed up and threw my arms around her. I held her so tightly, afraid that if I let go, she might evaporate into mist, but she didn’t. She was real. Flesh and blood and liver.
In mid-June of last year, Trisha performed the miracle I needed: She brought me back to life. A life that is filled with gratitude, purpose and a perfect organ. Just past the one-year mark, it will never be lost on me how fortunate I am to have received this extraordinary gift.
I asked her why she did this for a stranger, and she said, “because someone needed to do it” and so she courageously did. This new liver is my most treasured possession and has let me resume teaching and researching in the art history department at the University of Toronto, spending time with the people I love, and advocating for organ donation awareness and education, especially living donation.
During the waiting process, I began to refer to my future donor as my “living donor angel.” Trisha later told me that while she now lives in the northwest, she was born and raised in Los Angeles. My living donor angel was literally from the City of Angels. I am in awe of the capacity of human kindness, and the synchronicities of the universe.
Stephanie Azzarello lives in Toronto.