Marit and Tanner's Story
Organ donation continues to be a difficult decision for Canadians, where 90% of the population support it, yet only 32% register as donors.
Written by Emma Jones, Special to National Post
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hen Marit McKenzie was in Grade 12, she watched as her best friend struggled with complications from a childhood liver transplant. It prompted the artsy, empathetic Alberta teenager to become an advocate. Marit made her senior school project about the importance of organ donation. Then she went a step further, selling pieces of her artwork at the Otafest anime convention in Calgary, raising $500 for the David Foster Foundation, which works to financially support families of children undergoing an organ transplant. Marit also asked her mother to co-sign her organ donor card. For her parents, it was all typical of their daughter. “She just always was aware of what was going on around her and engaged with the world and thoughtful about other people,” says her father, Bruce. “She was just one of those people that helped everybody.” Her parents had no idea the impact their daughter’s selfless gesture would soon make on the lives of another family on the other side of the country, and several other families as well, helping the McKenzies find meaning at perhaps the lowest moment of their lives. In 2013, in her freshman year at the University of Calgary, Marit died suddenly. An acne medication is thought to have caused clots to restrict the
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flow of blood through her lungs, and resulted in a massive pulmonary embolism that led to four cardiac arrests. When Marit passed, her heart was donated to Tanner Fitzpatrick, a 12-year-old hockey player from Newfoundland. Tanner had been receiving treatment for dilated cardiomyopathy, an illness that causes the heart to become enlarged so that it cannot effectively pump blood to the rest of the body. Less than a year after Tanner became ill, doctors determined he would need a new heart. Expecting the process to take some time, the Fitzpatricks headed to Toronto, where Tanner could be close to SickKids Hospital should a heart become available. It took just days before the family received the call they were waiting for: there was a heart for Tanner. “I would call it the purest shock I ever felt,” says Tanner, who now works as an electrician in Newfoundland. “It was something I’ve never felt again. It was a lot to process.” Organ donation continues to be a difficult decision for Canadians, where 90 per cent of the population support organ donation, yet only 32 per cent register as donors, reports Canadian Blood Services. The low number of donors can translate into deadly consequences for the more than 4,500 people waiting for an organ donation—
