Transplant triathlete training relentlessly for world games
Anthony Parsons measures his personal records differently than other athletes. He trains vigorously to shave minutes and seconds off his times as a competitive triathlete, but he also measures the time he has left.
“The nurses would ask me how many minutes I’m training in a week, and I’m like, minutes? I ran an hour and a half to get here today, and I’ve gotta run back,” said Parsons, gesturing with both hands and wide eyes. Travelling 15 kilometres by foot, both ways, helps him fit more exercise into a day than most people. Each day counts.
Parsons, 35, is a kidney transplant recipient, training to represent Canada at the World Transplant Games in Malaga, Spain, which kick off June 25. He will compete in the Olympic-distance triathlon, the 1,500-metre run, the five-km run, the 400-metre freestyle swim and the 50-metre breaststroke.
“He is driven and focused in his disciplines. I predict he will do well,” said Niva Segatto, Parsons’ team manager with the Canadian Transplant Association. Parsons said he looks forward to communing and competing with athletes who share an ominous awareness of mortality.
One June day in 2010, Parsons was working a security shift at the Senate of Canada when he saw the on-duty nurse about a nagging headache. She dispatched him to the hospital because he had skyhigh blood pressure. He was transferred to the Regional Nephrology Unit at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital, diagnosed with chronic kidney failure and placed on dialysis within days.
“You’re basically dying, and fast,” the doctors told him. Parsons’s life separated into before and after: Before, he had been a newlywed husband, son of a single mother and brother to three siblings, making plans for the years ahead. With the sudden diagnosis, he was 28 years old and facing his own mortality.
For a year after being diagnosed with Glomerulonephritis, a disease that attacks the kidneys, he received in-home dialysis. It was a very “low quality of life,” he remembers with a forlorn expression on a face that is otherwise jubilant. He grew what he called “a disgusting beard,” was housebound, a slave to the clock. Every four hours, four times a day, Parsons was hooked up to a machine via a tube injected into his abdomen.
Dialysis is a Band-Aid solution when kidneys stop functioning on their own. Parsons was given the choice to wait on a list for a kidney from a deceased donor or look for a live one. Following his diagnosis, family members were tested and his little brother stepped forward
as the strongest match. On June 16, 2011, the brothers underwent surgery.
In the six years since surgery, Parsons has become a father, a two-time Ironman and a tattooed athlete.
On good days, he counts his time remaining in decades. The Kidney Foundation of Canada says kidneys from live donors last, on average, 15 years. On bad days, when blood tests come back abnormal or Parsons comes down with a cold that lasts weeks, he faces hard numbers. His life expectancy hinges upon keeping his donated kidney healthy.
“I take 21 pills a day — half in the morning, half at night,” he said. This regimen includes immune suppressants to keep his body from rejecting his kidney. These do their job, but put him at high risk of developing cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. To counteract this risk, he takes more pills.
It may sound arduous, but the alternative of returning to dialysis haunts him.
Currently, Parsons is healthy and his body is strong. Recent blood tests gave some concern, he said, but things seem to be looking better now. Setbacks remind him he walks a tightrope between making the most of whatever time he has left and making responsible longterm plans for his young family.
Balancing family, work and training involves calculated scheduling and a significant measure of motivation.
Most mornings, he wakes before the sun rises and gets out for a training run, cycle or swim. He heads off to work as a training supervisor with Parliamentary Protective Services, where he may fit in a workout during his lunch hour.
He returns home for family time with his wife of eight years, Geneviève Ladouceur, and their threeyear-old daughter, Flavie. He may do another training session after tucking his little girl into bed.
“I’m always tired, but in a good way,” he says. His daughter is too young to understand his kidney disease, but she loves to remind him to take his meds when she hears his cellphone alarm go off at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. each day.
His wife, whom Parsons calls “the hero,” keeps him positive and motivated. She prepares fresh, low-sodium dishes, following the advice of his dietitian and nutritionist. She works full-time as a teacher and shoulders a lot of the household and family responsibilities when Parsons falls ill or competes out of town.
He is quick to point out that while he endured dialysis and transplant surgery, Ladouceur’s life was also upended. Instead of a house full of children and retiring together, her plans had to change.
“We do plan stuff, but not on a long-term basis; it’s more shortterm,” he said. “Obviously, she’s cognizant of the fact I may have limited time, but she’s positive, saying, ‘Don’t worry about that.’ ”
Parsons said he won’t retire with a million dollars in the bank, because he is focused on making the most of his time with family. The couple decided to limit their family size to one child, so if Parsons’s health does deteriorate, Ladouceur won’t have a large family to support on her own. He said they plan to make sure Flavie has what she needs, now and in the future, but their primary focus is on measuring their time in quality, not necessarily quantity.
Setbacks happen. Test results can come back and give him a jolt of fear. The clock keeps ticking on a donated kidney he knows will only last another decade or two, at most. When faced with the morbid truth of his limitations, he grows visibly uncomfortable. He fidgets, taking his hat on and off.
“I’m not a big talker, so I just try to smooth things out,” he said. “Or I’ll go for a nice long run to clear my head.”
He knows there will come a time, in sport or in life, where his body will not respond the way he wants. The depths of his lows on dialysis and his recovery from transplant surgery prove that when the time comes, he will know how to carry on.
“I like to think I am always stronger mentally than I am physically,” he said.
“I know if my body is failing, my mind is stronger.”