Family raises donor awareness

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This article was published 24/02/2020 (2161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon couple who lost their son in a freak accident at home is hoping to raise awareness about the need for organ donations.

Aimee and Kevin Hatcher have launched what they are calling the Green Heart Project to reach out to others who have faced the same kind of unbearable tragedy.

Their son Luke, 12, became entangled in some ropes he was using to make an obstacle course in the basement of their home last December. 

He was rushed to Brandon Regional Health Centre, where he was revived before being flown to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.

The day after he arrived, doctors confirmed there was no brain activity and he would never regain consciousness. The difficult decision was made to donate Luke’s organs.

“That day was a really tough day as a family,” Aimee said.

Luke’s kidneys, lungs, liver and pancreas were donated. Only his heart remained unmatched.

While their three children — Luke, Ruby, 10, and Jillian, 7 — had been told about their parents’ wishes to be organ donors, the conversation never turned to the children’s wishes.

“It’s not something that as a parent you even want to contemplate, having your child be in a position where they’re an organ donor,” Aimee said, adding if Luke had been able to, she knows he would have told them to donate his organs to others who needed them.

The name of the project comes from green being the colour of organ donation, and the heart to honour Luke’s own big heart, Aimee said.

“Certainly, we’re really early stages with this,” she said. “This is just something that I feel very strongly in my heart is, sort of, a legacy for us, for Luke.”

Part of their goal is to create awareness, Aimee said.

“I want to encourage families to have that conversation openly, even with their children as they become an age to understand that,” she said, adding children’s organs, in particular, are hard to come by.

“Most of the time, when people are in a situation like we were in, it’s very difficult to have to go through the waiting process for them to find the donors, have the teams flown in,” she said. “So a lot of times people will make the decision that they just can’t do the waiting part of that.”

They are also hoping the project will offer support for others who have gone through similar experiences.

As well as a planned website, the couple released a video in late January, produced by Brandon-based Trident Films, that details the family’s story and the project.

“We felt it was really important to tell Luke’s story in our own words,” Aimee said.

The Green Heart Project video can be viewed on YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=yEsz6IXKu1g).

“Right now, the power of social media is such in this day and age that I think that will be, sort of, our biggest avenue and we will kind of work from there,” she said. “It’s amazing how things can spread across social media as we go.”

» brobertson@brandonsun.com

 

SIDEBAR: Organ donation by the numbers

The Organ Project, a not-for-profit organization focused on ending the organ transplant waiting list, reported on its website that more than 4,500 people are waiting for an organ donation in Canada. About 260 of those people waiting for a transplant will die every year — that’s about five deaths per week, or one death about every 30 hours that could be saved if they had a viable donor.

The website also reports that:

• Donation rates in Canada have remained relatively low for many years. At 20.9 donors per million people, Canada’s donation rate is below many other countries including Spain (43.4), the United States (31) and the United Kingdom (21.4);

• Only one per cent of deaths in hospitals end up becoming actual organ donors;

• 90 per cent of Canadians say they support organ and tissue donation; however, fewer than 20 per cent have made plans to donate;

• One organ donor can save up to eight lives, and a tissue donor can benefit up to 75 individuals.

Transplant Manitoba reported that in 2019, there were 12 lung transplants, 50 kidney transplants, 14 liver transplants and two heart transplants.

» The Brandon Sun