Posted By Carol Mulligan
Posted 3 days ago
Jessie St. Amour, the poster child for northerners demanding a better form of kidney dialysis, had a dream come true this week.
Instead of recovering from his first day of training in home dialysis Tuesday, the Sudbury teenager was rushing by taxi from Toronto to London Health Sciences Centre for a kidney transplant.
“It’s a beautiful day,” said an ecstatic Richard St. Amour in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon from London, where his son was recovering from the six-hour surgery.
“He’s doing exceptionally well.”
Rather than spending a month on what St. Amour considers the mean streets of Toronto, he and wife Anne will remain by their son’s side in London as he recovers from the transplant.
Saturday, they will celebrate Jessie’s 19th birthday - and his new lease on life.
The St. Charles College graduate has been undergoing conventional hemodialysis at Sudbury Regional Hospital since December when his kidneys failed, a complication of a hereditary disease called Alport Syndrome inherited from his mother.
Anne underwent a kidney transplant when Jessie was six, and she and Richard were devastated when their youngest son later developed kidney complications.
Despite being ill, Jessie continued in school and competed with the St. Charles Cardinals on the football field and the ice rink until the end of both seasons last year.
Since Jessie’s kidneys failed, his father has been fighting to gain access to a better form of kidney dialysis offered at many hospitals in southern Ontario.
Jessie’s cause captured the attention of retired mining health and safety activist Homer Seguin, who enlisted powerful seniors’ groups in the city to press Health Minister George Smitherman to fund the treatment here.
Smitherman says that nocturnal home hemodialysis - long, slow blood filtering that resembles normal kidney function - is the superior form of treatment.
He has also said his government doesn’t have the money to offer the treatment provincewide.
He shouldn’t think the point is moot now that Jessie has received a new kidney. His father is vowing never to give up the fight on behalf of dialysis patients in Sudbury.
For now, though, Richard is celebrating the fact his son’s new kidney is an exceptional match.
“It was better than perfect,” he said.
St. Amour said the family knows the kidney came from a young person “and that’s unfortunate.”
He and Jessie have talked many times about how his transplant would come at the cost of someone else’s life, “but we’ve put that to rest for now,” said St. Amour. “We’ll deal with that later.”
St. Amour said the mood was jubilant at St. Michael’s Hospital when he and Jessie learned a kidney was available.
“Jessie was taken aback. He was shocked, but there was no fear.”
He and his son were well prepared “to handle anything,” said Richard.
“We’ve been through this so many times. We’ve never had a negative conversation about what we were trying to do. We prepared for the worst, but we expected the best.”
He and Jessie were so excited when they got the phone call from Sudbury, they couldn’t wait to catch a bus from Toronto to London. Instead, they asked the cabbie who drove them from St. Mike’s to their Toronto hotel to take them to London.
St. Amour was surprised when the hotel clerk waived all fees for their brief stay, and the cab driver exchanged his rundown taxi for a Lincoln Continental while father and son were hastily packing for London.
They drove in style - and in record time.
When word came that a kidney was available for Jessie, Anne left Sudbury and arrived in London just 10 minutes before her son went into surgery at 4 a.m.
Eldest son Steven remained in Sudbury, celebrating his birthday he thought would be forever associated with the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, Sept. 11 will bring memories of a better time.
Richard wasn’t sure how long Jessie would have to remain in hospital, but he expected his son to be up and walking as early as Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
“I really don’t know. He’s a tough kid.”
Infact Jessie and Ric are such an inspiration to me that I named my kidney Jessie 
lol