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Toddler's need highlights drive for organ donations

By Jennifer O'Brien
Sun Media
Copyright 2007 The London Free Press
April 24, 2007

Imagine your toddler's infectious giggle, hilarious imagination or adoring eyes.

Imagine the day-to-day crises of potty training and sleeping through the night.

Imagine the child could die without a liver transplant.

A Woodstock mother doesn't have to imagine any of that-- it's her life.

This week -- National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week -- Nicole Lalonde wants to introduce people to her life. Because once people meet her son Jack, she knows they'll realize the importance of organ donation.

"People are drawn to this child. He is the cutest, sweetest thing in the world," said Lalonde of her 2 1/2 -year-old son. "He has dark hair, green hazel eyes and his eyelashes are three inches long.

"He's very funny, he loves to play pretend . . . he pretends he's on a boat and he yells, 'The sharks are coming, the sharks are coming.'

"And he could play with trucks all day long.

But he also has a bile drain attached to his liver. It comes out of his stomach, and into a tube wrapped around him. His mom changes the dressing twice a day.

Jack Lalonde was born with biliary atresia, a disease in which the ducts in the liver are attacked, making it unable to process the bile that gets trapped inside.

By the time he was six months old, Jack was very sick.

"He cried all the time," his mom said. "He had veins all over his face, his hands were bright red and yellow, his belly was so big he looked nine months pregnant."

At seven months, he received a liver transplant, and for 17 months -- it was so great -- he was healthy.

Then last November life was put on pause again, after complications with the new liver caused another bile buildup.

Jack rapidly became very sick again, his mom says.

As it turned out, his ducts were not doing their job. He had a massive infection. Doctors inserted a bile drain to help his body rid the poisons.

The drain helps, and though it's inconvenient and Jack "hates the dressing changes," he is doing well, said his mom.

But there is no way to stop what is happening, and one day the boy will be sick enough to need a liver transplant, she said.

Nicole Lalonde tries to be positive. Her voice strengthens when asked what her son is like. ("Oh my God, he's hilarious.")

But this is taking a toll on the weary family of three.

"I had a nervous breakdown in November, I got very sick," said the former brain injury rehabilitation therapist. "It's very hard on my husband Matthew and I."

Driven by their son, the couple has become passionate promoters of organ donation.

"We want organ donation to be something people just do," she said. "Sign the card, tell your family."

In Ontario, 1,748 patients are on the transplant waiting list, according to Ontario's Trillium Gift of Life Network.

Every three days someone dies waiting for an organ transplant.

The Gift of Life Network advocates for Ontarians to sign donor cards and also let their families know their wishes.

Because at the end of the day, doctors ask family members what to do with a deceased person's organs.

"I really want people to understand what a difference they can make," Lalonde said.

ORGAN DONATION WEEK

- National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week runs until April 29.

- For more details, go to www.giftoflife.on.ca or call 1-800-263-2833.

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