HEATHER ZIRK wants more families to talk about organ, tissue donation
A hospital is an unconventional place for a wedding, but it was exactly where Dr. Harry Zirk’s youngest daughter and her fiance wanted to get married.
It was the summer of 2018 and Zirk had been in the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton for a week after suffering a heart attack while he was on dialysis for ongoing kidney failure.
The couple wed in the hospital among family and friends on the Thursday after Zirk was admitted.
“Everyone went home from the hospital smiling instead of bawling for once,” his wife, Heather Zirk, said of the wedding. It had been a challenging time for the family, as Zirk’s life was close to the end.
The two began dating in Calgary while they were in high school. They celebrated 40 years of marriage before Zirk passed away July 22, 2018, after a month in hospital.
But being a medical family — Heather was a registered nurse before she retired — the two had long discussed her husband’s wish to donate his organs and tissues to someone who could use them.
Now, Heather is advocating for families to have these types of conversations before they become a necessity, for their own sakes and those of the transplant patients whose lives could be saved.
When Zirk’s illnesses, including diabetes and kidney failure, made it clear his organs would not be in good enough condition to be donated, they chose to gift his body to the University of Alberta medical school through the anatomical gift program.
“It’s a tougher decision when their heart is beating and they’re warm,” Heather said, stressing the importance of discussing organ and tissue donation as early as possible.
When Zirk passed away, the anatomical gift program was unable to accept his body at that time, so instead Heather was put in touch with the tissue donation program. Zirk’s corneas, long bones and connective tissues were retrieved.
Heather later learned his corneas gave someone the gift of sight, and his long bones helped 14 people undergoing joint replacements.
It eases Heather’s grief to know her husband is still helping people after his death — similar to how he’d always helped people in life as a doctor. The process has also given her a new appreciation for how important it is to have these conversations with loved ones before they are gone.
“Harry could appreciate what we’re supposed to get out of life and certainly helping other people is kind of one of the things that was important to him,” said Heather. “I think things happened exactly the way he would have wanted it to happen.”