One couple, two kidneys, lives intertwined

MONTREAL, Que. — Suzanne and Michel LaBrosse planned to celebrate their milestone 20th anniversary on Monday with a bit more bubbly than other years.

Champagne is a tradition for the couple every Dec. 7, though it isn’t the date they exchanged wedding vows 42 years ago. It’s the date that Michel donated one of his kidneys to his wife.

“Suzanne gave me her heart, so it’s normal that I gave her a kidney,” the 69-year-old said from the couple’s home in the Laurentians last week.

His life-saving gift, plus their good fortune to have been compatible — in blood, tissue and spirit — has enabled the couple to enjoy 20 years of daily walks in nature, golf, tennis, travel and meals together.

“We were born on the same day, except in different years,” Suzanne LaBrosse, 64, said with a laugh, suggesting in jest that their shared birthday might have somehow forged their connection. “I don’t know if that has something to do with it.”

Dec. 7, 2000 is also etched in the memory of her husband’s surgeon, Liane Feldman, who was recently appointed to the joint position of surgeon-inchief of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and chair of the department of surgery in McGill University’s faculty of medicine.

Feldman, who has dedicated her career to minimally invasive surgery and innovation, removed LaBrosse’s left kidney at the Montreal General Hospital on that date in what was the MUHC’s first laparoscopic surgery to remove a kidney. Since then, about 350 donors have undergone the procedure.

“I definitely remember it. It was a very important date for me, too,” Feldman said.

She also recalled her patient’s thank-you letter shortly after his operation and his wife’s successful transplant.

“He wrote me a most beautiful letter. I laminated it and actually have it on my wall because it was so moving and he was so eloquent.”

Before laparoscopic surgery was an option, doctors would perform traditional open surgery to remove a kidney from a donor. The traditional procedure involved making a large incision under the rib cage, so it was relatively painful and recovery was long, Feldman said.

Laparoscopic surgery involves four small incisions, the largest measuring an inch and the others measuring five millimetres, she said. The surgeon frees up the kidney, which is about the size of a fist, and it’s removed through another small incision of seven to eight centimetres in the lower abdomen. It’s a less painful incision, Feldman said, likening it to an incision to remove an appendix. The smaller incisions mean a much quicker recovery for the donor. A donor will typically spend up to two nights in a hospital, she said.

LaBrosse said he was walking the day after his operation. He recovered fully and requires no medication.

“It’s been one of the most rewarding procedures that I’ve had the honour to be involved in,” Feldman said of performing laparoscopic surgery on living donors. “So, I’m very grateful to Mr. LaBrosse. He was the first. It’s not easy to be the first in anything. But he made it so easy on us. He was reassuring me the day of the surgery that he had full confidence and he knew it was going to go well.”

A kidney from a living donor offers better results than from a deceased donor, Feldman said. The kidney from a living donor will work, on average, for 15 years. “But we have kidney recipients who are 30 years with a live donor kidney,” she added. A deceased-donor kidney lasts, on average, 10 years.

Transplant Québec, which coordinates organ donation in the province, says about 10 per cent of transplanted organs in Quebec come from living donors, while the proportion for Canada is 25 per cent.

“These are really special operations for us and really special people doing this amazing, courageous, altruistic thing,” Feldman said of living donors.

Michel LaBrosse downplays his contribution, calling his wife the hero.

“For us, it’s a second chance because Suzanne’s life was very tough because of her illness,” he said. “So, we’re so grateful that this happened.”

She was in her early 40s when she went on dialysis in 1998. Her kidneys had started to fail. She had polycystic kidney disease, a hereditary condition in which clusters of cysts grow in the kidneys, causing them to enlarge and eventually stop working properly.

Her mother died of the condition at the age of 50.

Even with four hours of dialysis three times a week to cleanse her blood, Suzanne LaBrosse was in pain from the cysts. Other complications occurred, and a year after starting dialysis, doctors had to remove both of her kidneys.

The list of people waiting for a deceased-donor kidney was long. So, while she spent another year on dialysis without her kidneys, she and her husband underwent months of rigorous tests to see if he could give her one of his. A living donation requires a healthy blood and tissue match between donor and recipient, and the donor must be in excellent health to ensure they won’t be affected by having one kidney instead of two.

Whether or not it was thanks to their shared birthday, the LaBrosse’s learned they were compatible in a way they had never before imagined.

On Dec. 7, 2000, her surgeon, Peter Metrakos, picked up her husband’s kidney at the Montreal General and ferried it in a cooler by car down the road to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where she was waiting.

“I remember when the doctor arrived with the kidney, he touched my arm and said, ‘I have your kidney,’” she said. “It was December and his hands were very cold. He said, ‘Well, I didn’t take a chance so I brought it by car’. So, I don’t know why I remember this, but his hands were so cold.”

After her transplant, she returned to work as a manager at the municipal courthouse in Pointe-Claire. She retired from the post-municipalmerger city of Montreal 11 years ago. Her husband retired as a director with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency almost a decade ago.

The LaBrosses were featured in a Montreal Gazette article about living organ donation in 2002. Last week, Michel LaBrosse wrote a letter to the Postmedia newspaper as their 20th anniversary approached.

He said he wanted to raise awareness of organ donation and urge people not to stand in the way of loved ones who want to become donors, including those who sign their consent to donate organs and tissue after they die.