HAVE A CUP OF JOE WITH JOE – Be A Donor In April . . . Give The Gift Of Life
April is Be A Donor month across Ontario to help raise awareness of the importance of organ and tissue donation.
The month-long awareness campaign concludes with the Canada-wide National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week, from April 21 to 27, 2024, to get the word out that one organ donor can help save eight lives, and one tissue donor helps 75 people.
Ontario Health’s Trillium Gift of Life Network handles delivering and coordinating organ and tissue donation and transplantation services across the province.
They plan, promote, and support all health care and allied professionals, advocates, and the Ontario public, in saving the lives of Ontarians waiting for a life-saving transplant.
Sadly, the Windsor region needs to step up its game with respect to organ donation.
Out of 170 Ontario communities, Windsor ranks 153rd with 86,658 registered donors, or 32% of a possible 268,637 eligible donors (16 years of age and an OHIP card holder).
In 2013, the family of Dennis Segatto — including his wife Niva and their daughter Bianca — founded the Windsor-Essex Gift of Life Association to help increase Windsor’s registered organ and tissue donation numbers.
Today, Niva is still the Chair of the organization, which has seen their registered donor base gradually increase from 18% of registered donors in 2013 (41,621 registered donors) to our current numbers. However, more work still needs to be done. Their community outreach is literally saving lives.
As a multi-kidney transplant recipient, Dennis has been a strong and enthusiastic advocate promoting organ and tissue donation in the Windsor area and beyond, for the past 45 years.
Since his first of three kidney transplants in 1979, he has been a local hero and public face for organ and tissue donation.
With his last transplant in 1994, Dennis describes his 45 years as: “An amazing journey and a brand-new lease on life.”
In July 2015, this youthful looking sexagenarian climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with two local friends to raise awareness on organ and tissue donation, and then created a documentary film following their journey.
“I needed to promote organ transplantation and healthy living, and that there is a normal life after transplants,” he expresses.
As a result of all his hard work, Dennis was presented the 2018 Advocate In Action Award by Trillium Gift of Life Network for his 40 years of service promoting organ and tissue donor awareness.
Now let’s meet 39-year-old Chris Domenicucci (known as Dom), from Belle River. Like Dennis, he is a multiple organ transplant recipient, having received two liver transplants since the age of 17.
Dom remembers as far back as four years of age that: “I always had trouble with my bowels. I was always constipated and had the roughest time having a bowel movement. It would be days or even weeks before I could pass anything no matter how much I tried. The most frustrating part of it all was when my parents took me to see the doctor about it. The only thing the doctor said was that I needed to stop being ‘lazy’ and ‘try to go every day.’ There was no checkup, no tests . . . nothing.”
He has since realized he was living with the symptoms of Crohn’s disease.
His grade school years were marked with incidents of embarrassment and confusion. Things settled down during his first two years of high school, but by grade 11 he had dropped weight and was jaundiced.
Finally, through blood work and a liver biopsy, Dom was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), a disease of the bile ducts which carry the digestive liquid bile from the liver to the small intestine. In PSC, inflammation causes scars within the bile ducts. These scars make the ducts hard and narrow and gradually cause serious liver damage.
At age 19, his Crohn’s disease was treated through trips to University Hospital in London for Remicade IVs every four weeks. Dom’s liver swelled up and pressed against other organs creating a sensation of a heart attack. It caused his lungs to become constricted, and he experienced laboured breathing, requiring him to use oxygen at home. All of this and pain meds (OxyContin) to try and keep him comfortable — if not alive.
By December he was designated “high priority” needing a liver transplant while waiting at University Hospital, which he successfully received December 4, 2008.
There were a few related medical issues in the ensuing years, but Dom was back to school, involved in local theatre, and reclaiming his “normal” life.
Then, in late 2017, organ rejection occurred. This did not stop the feisty and determined Dom. In his words: “this disease was not going to take me out!”
On February 22, 2018 he received his second successful liver transplant and today his blood work is great, he’s back to working, going to the gym and totally celebrating, getting “my second lease on life.”
These two heroic Windsor men, Dennis and Dom, share their compelling life journeys of organ transplantation in the hopes of underscoring the importance of organ and tissue donation.
During Be A Donor Month, please become a registered organ donor online.
You can also visit the Windsor-Essex Gift of Life Association at Devonshire Mall during National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week on April 27 and register onsite. Your decision to be a donor offers the opportunity of life for the nearly 1,200 Ontarians currently waiting for an organ transplant.
And finally, the 10th National Transplant Games take place August 3 to 9, 2024 at Carleton University in Ottawa. Participants include transplant recipients, living donors, donor families, and supporters.
