By Claude Scilley
Whig-Standard Staff Writer
This article originally appeared in the Kingston Whig Standard on February 26th.
Seven people in British Columbia today owe an improved quality of life
– indeed, maybe even their lives – to a friendship forged 25 years ago
on the football field at Queen’s University.
“In this case being teammates takes on a whole different meaning,” said
Bill Barrable, a member of the Golden Gaels in the early 1980s.
Barrable is now the executive director of BC Transplant, the
Vancouver-based organization that matches organ donors with recipients
in that province. He faced a crisis last week when a donor became
available and the agency had no means of dispatching its transplant
team.
The donor was “outside the lower mainland” – Barrable was purposely
vague for privacy reasons, he said – and that meant BC Transplant had
to charter a jet to get the team of surgeons and critical care nurses
to the site.
Except there weren’t any.
“We’ve got this list of carriers and we went down the list and they
were all gone, right across Canada,” Barrable said.
“The message we got back was there’s a major draw on corporate jets due
to the Oscars in California.”
That’s where Bob McFarlane comes into the picture. Barrable’s former
teammate at Queen’s, he’s now the chief financial officer at Telus. the
telecommunications giant.
“I’d said to my staff let me know if there’s ever a day when we can’t
find a jet,” Barrable said. “I know Bob at Telus and I know they have a
jet and in a crunch I’ll call him and see if there’s any possibility
that the jet’s available.
“That’s what happened.”
Barrable made the call but at first couldn’t contact McFarlane. The
clock was ticking as Barrable explained to McFarlane’s assistant the
nature of his business. Moments later, McFarlane was on the phone, from
the airplane in question.
“It was in the air,” Barrable said.
McFarlane listened and then explained the situation to his colleagues
on board. “They agreed right away to make it happen,” Barrable said.
“We didn’t have much time to play with. Without [their cooperation] it
wouldn’t have happened.
“If we had an Oscar to give, we’d give it to them, for best performance
in a supporting role.”
While the jet was refuelled, the transplant team was scrambled.
“Seven people were transplanted who wouldn’t have been transplanted
otherwise,” Barrable said.
Barrable, a kicker and receiver, graduated in 1983 as the team’s No. 10
all-time leading scorer. McFarlane, a defensive back, transferred to
Western in 1982 and missed the Gaels’ Vanier Cup appearance the
following year.
Barrable said yesterday said the situation was critical because of the
long odds against successful transplants.
“A very small number of deaths are medically eligible to be organ
donors,” Barrable explained. Donors have to meet brain-death criteria:
They have to die on a ventilator, the organs have to be viable and they
have to be recovered in a short period of time or they won’t be
suitable for transplant.
That group probably represents less than one per cent of deaths,
Barrable said.
“It’s a very small pool of potential donors who meet all of these
criteria, so each one is extremely precious,” he said.
“A third of people on the waiting list die waiting for a transplant. It
wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that if we didn’t get these
transplants, there probably would be seven people who could have died.”
Barrable said he couldn’t say what organs were transplanted. He did say
at least two of the recipients were children, and all the recipients
are apparently recovering well.
Barrable said the routine involved in harvesting organs takes a
surgical team to the hospital where the potential donor has been
identified.
“The organ recovery would occur there,” he said. “Then the organs
themselves would be flown back with the team to Vancouver where they
would be transplanted.
“Recovering a heart or a lung you have about four hours to put it back
into somebody else, or the function of that organ drops precipitously.
You have a really short window in which to work.”
Barrable said transplanting organs is now considered mainstream therapy.
“The success of transplants has come a long way. Kidney transplant
patients have more than a 95 per cent survival rate. Heart and liver
[transplants] are close to that.
“They save taxpayers a lot of money, just on the cost of dialysis
alone.”
Which is why each one is so important.
“We’ve had close calls before but have always been able to find a
carrier in a crunch,” Barrable said. “I shudder to think what the
consequences would be if we ever couldn’t find one.
“I’d rather not think about that. I won’t think about that.”
McFarlane is still deeply involved in the Queen’s football program as
an alumnus. Barrable said his memories of the program also are good
ones.
“I remember being at a function and Doug had some nice things to say
about me,” Barrable said of his old coach, Doug Hargreaves.
“I was so young and shy, I didn’t know how to respond. Years later, I
wrote and told him all the things I wanted to say and didn’t have the
courage to say at the time.
“That’s something I’ll never forget. Doug was a very smart coach. He
threw compliments around like manhole covers. That was a special time
and I remember my time there very fondly.”
