I Don’t Want to Just Survive, I Want to Live

In this episode of the Living Transplant podcast, host Candice, was joined by Dawn Ethier, a police officer and mother of four. Dawn had thyroid cancer over 10 years ago. The cancer was treated, but she was left with hypoparathyroidism, which caused horrible side effects, changed her lifestyle, and took a lot of time away from her family, her work, and her life. Dawn did a lot of research, and with her advocacy and ingenuity, brought the idea of a parathyroid transplant to her doctors, who eventually found Dr. Karen Devon, an endocrine surgeon at UHN's Sprott Department of Surgery.  With only one other recorded case of this exact transplant in scientific literature, Dr. Devon was inspired by Dawn to do homework, connect with specialists around the world, and several years later, cured Dawn's hypoparathyroidism following a ground-breaking North American first procedure at UHN's Ajmera Transplant Centre. This changed Dawn's life, her family's life, and changed the future for patients.

The views and opinions expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Toronto General or University Health Network.

For more about Dawn’s story, and the team behind this North American first, please visit https://uhnfoundation.ca/stories/north-american-first-transplant-offers-mother-of-four-a-future-now/

For more information about Ajmera Transplant Centre, please visit https://www.uhn.ca/Transplant

Have questions? Comments? Ideas for an episode? Please reach out to the Centre for Living Organ Donation at livingorgandonation@uhn.ca

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