Image Credit: Contributed/CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

LIVING ORGAN DONATION

Kamloops donor helped Ferris Backmeyer receive her transplant through Kidney Paired Donation program

Jul 14, 2023 | 1:21 PM

KAMLOOPS — Leah Scott knew that she had a role to play in helping young Ferris Backmeyer receive a life-saving kidney transplant.

“I just felt this deep feeling in my heart that I had to be part of Ferris’ story, that God was calling me to be part of Ferris’ story,” Scott explains. “The hardest part was actually working up the nerve to say to my husband ‘How do you feel about me giving a kidney to someone we don’t really know?’”

After an extensive battery of tests, it was determined Scott could be a viable donor. However, after Ferris’ first transplant failed, more testing revealed she wasn’t a good match. So, Scott and the Backmeyer’s waited, until early 2023.

“In February of this year, I got the call from the donor nurse that said we actually have a better match for her in the paired exchange program if you’re still willing,” Scott recalls. “I was like ‘Yes, I have been waiting for you to call.’”

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Kidney Paired Donation gives people the chance to become a living kidney donor while ensuring that someone they want to help receives a needed kidney, even if they are not a direct match.

“You have to have a recipient and a donor in every pair, and if a kidney comes available for your recipient, you have to be willing to send your kidney off to a stranger,” Scott says. “A stranger got mine so that Ferris could get hers.”

“Ferris was highly sensitized, so very hard to find a good match,” Lindsey explains. “Being part of that criteria you become top of the list across national donor lists. Ferris was up there and never got a single call. Ro really, if it wasn’t for LEah and this match, we wouldn’t have made our way to Toronto for this surgery. As much as she’d like to say it wasn’t about her, it’s 100 per cent about her. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”

Leah donated her kidney just a few days before Ferris received her transplant.

“I’m only two weeks – just over two weeks post-op now,” Scott says. “I feel quite good. I have to be careful and still take it easy, but the recovery has been better, for sure, than I imagined it would be. By the time surgery came around, I was just so sure that this is what I had to do, that I just wasn’t nervous at all.”

Becoming a living organ donor isn’t for everyone. However, Scott says it’s one of the most humbling and gratifying experiences of her life.

“If you feel called to do it, I would totally say do it,” Scott says. “Otherwise, at least sign your organ donor cards. Like, at least do those things, because, there are so many people needing this, and waiting for this, and we don’t really get to take them with us.”