A mother is making a plea for her son’s life.
Five years ago, Linda Rollier gave her then 19-year-old son Shon Wilson the life-saving gift of one of her kidneys.
And while he had four years of working and enjoying life in Fort Nelson, Wilson’s body has now rejected the kidney and he is no longer responding well to dialysis.
“He is so weak he can’t even write his own name,” says Rollier of her son, who is father to a three-year-old daughter. “Something is going on with his hands, he’s freezing all the time and very, very tired.”
His only hope for survival is another kidney.
Unfortunately, family members who would be willing to part with one of their own are unable to do so.
Because Wilson’s body has rejected his mom’s kidney, nobody else on her side of the family can donate. And everybody on his dad’s side has the wrong blood type.
Wilson’s blood type is B, so Rollier says he would be able to accept a kidney from a healthy person with either Type B or Type O blood.
Within two weeks of the November 2006 transplant, both Rollier and Wilson were amazed at how well they felt.
But in the last year, Wilson started feeling sick again. His body began creating antibodies against Rollier’s blood proteins so the kidney was rejected.
He had to quit work as a heavy equipment operator and move back to Salmon Arm early last fall, when he begun trips to and from Kamloops three to five times a week for dialysis.
In January, Wilson began in-home dialysis that requires a 45-minute process of fluid exchange four times a day.
His kidneys are in 100 per cent shutdown, says Rollier, who points out that neasrly 80 per cent of the more than 4,300 Canadians on the organ transplant list are waiting for a kidney.
The Kidney Foundation of Canada reports that in 2010, one-third of Canadians who died while waiting for an organ transplant were waiting for a kidney. In 2010, 82 people died before a kidney could be found.
Nearly 40 per cent of all kidney transplants are made possible by living donors.
If someone is interested in donating a kidney to Wilson, they can get in touch directly with the live organ transplant clinic in Vancouver at 604-875-4111 ext. 20518.