Sudbury funeral director, lung transplant recipient says organ donors have nothing to fear

When Don Perreault was in his 20s, his battle with leukemia —  and subsequent bone marrow transplant — reduced his lung capacity to just 27 per cent.

"I couldn't walk, I had to sit while I was teaching, I couldn't carry a bag of groceries," Perreault said. "I felt like I was dying slowly."

Now 51, Perreault credits a new set of lungs, which he received in 2009 through Ontario's organ donation program, with giving him a new lease on life.

"It was incredible," he said. "My brother refers to it as a resurrection."

While Trillium Gift of Life reports that Ontario's participation increased by 30 per cent over the past year, there are still 1,500 people in the province waiting for an organ right now.

'A miracle'

While waiting for the transplant, Perreault said he lived in Toronto, waiting for a phone call to tell him a donor had been found.

He said there's a two-hour window where a recipient can respond to the call, otherwise the hospital "moves down the list" of potential recipients.

Once the call came, Perreault was in the hospital operating room within hours.

"I stepped outside on Jan. 29 in the cold, and walked home. That's about as close as I can come to a miracle."

'Death scares us all'

In his job as a funeral home director, Perreault said he has been given a unique perspective on people's views about two squeamish topics—  death and organ donation.

"Death scares all of us. And a lot of it is because of the unknown," he said.

"In my 30 years, I've seen a lot of human remains. Once your time is up, you can pass that life on to somebody else. And what a great honour that would be to have a part of you living in somebody else's body."

Perreault said he often hears people say they didn't know what their family member wanted done with their remains.

"Every minute of our life could be the last minute — and we put off things until later on. Organ transplant is something people don't want to talk about, because perhaps they figure this will be a bad omen."

But he wants people to have that conversation anyway: "If they [only] knew one body [has] the potential to save eight lives.

"We often talk about heroes," he continued. "All these organ donors are unsung heroes."

To sign up to donate, go to beadonor.ca.

Click here to listen to Perreault tell his story to CBC's northern Ontario afternoon show Up North.