PRINCE GEORGE – It was a moment of celebration at the University Hospital of Northern BC Tuesday for both donors and recipients of organs. It’s called Operation Popcorn.
Rick and Doreen Woodford lost their son Matthew in 2018 and the decision was made to donate four of his organs.
“We actually got a letter from a young person. ‘I got his lungs.’ And they said that they were just being able to go out for a walk and they were going to go fishing and they were going to go for a hike and just be able to breathe, just to actually just go outside and walk for the first time in a long time,” says an emotional Rick, who says donating his organs is exactly what his son would have wanted.
BC Transplant has reached a milestone. Eleven thousand transplants. One of the earliest transplants went to Joyce Grantham, who received a new heart 25 years ago.
“It was scary. It’s very scary. It’s a very emotional thing. I immediately phoned my family,” she says. “I got the phone call about 9:00 in the morning that they had a heart. They said, ‘How are you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been better. I’m just going and getting ready to go into my doctor.’ She says, ‘Well, we want you down here.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean you want me down there?’ She said, ‘We got a heart for you.'”
Rick Woodford says the number of people in British Columbia walking around healthy today because of an organ transplant would fill the CN Centre, and then some.
“Some 6,200 people in BC are survivors. People that are still living and having great lives because somebody donated. We had six people that passed away last year waiting for an organization, which is not where I’d like to get to zero. We have 1.6 million people signed up to be donors. It’d be nice to get that a little higher so we could not have any of those six people passing away. And six is also the number of people that turned out for or got donations in Prince George last year.”
According to BC Transplant, 465 transplants were performed in 2022. That’s 25 hearts, 54 lungs, 288 kidneys and 101 livers. And just over one and a half million British Columbians have registered their decision to donate their organs. And Woodford encourages more.
“It takes two minutes to sign up. I can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t. You know, there’s a lot of simple analogies that. But really, once you’re at that end stage of life, you don’t need your organs anymore and somebody else can use them. So why wouldn’t you donate? You donate your clothes and stuff. Why would you not donate your organs?”
And while dropping off boxes of popcorn to those who make organ transplants happen may seem a modest gesture, those involved say they have nothing but praise for those who make it happen.
