Heather Latter
After almost 15 months on the transplant list, Nathan DeGagne finally got the call that would give him a new heart.
“We got our phone call on Aug. 27 at 10:30 a.m.,” his wife, Sarah, said Friday from Ottawa, where the surgery was performed.
“It was really overwhelming,” she added. “They said they had a heart offer for Nathan and did we want it?
“Of course we said yes.”
The Fort Frances native, now in his early 30s, was diagnosed with a serious heart virus as a teenager. Then in the spring of 2013, it was determined he needed a heart transplant.
The couple, who have three children, moved to Winnipeg and while he was on the transplant list, they also installed a heart pump.
Needing to be close to the hospital, they have been residing in the city waiting for a new heart.
“We waited almost 15 months for that call,” DeGagne said. “And so when it came, we were actually in the middle of reading an article about another family’s organ donation.
“So it was really bizarre that way,” she added, noting they still haven’t finished reading that article yet.
Once they got the phone call, they were told to sit tight and the air ambulance would call them when it was time to leave for the airport.
“We’ve had our bags packed for more than a year now, so we were just throwing last-minute things in the bags and making the phone calls to people that we needed to make,” DeGagne recalled.
They left Winnipeg around 3 p.m. that afternoon and arrived in Ottawa a few hours later.
“We waited here for several hours,” DeGagne said, noting both Nathan’s mother from Fort Frances and an aunt from Edmonton arrived in time to see him before the surgery.
“They took him for surgery just after midnight, making it Aug. 28 when he got his new heart,” DeGagne said, noting that also was her parents’ 43rd wedding anniversary.
“It was a big day, for sure,” she stressed, noting that throughout the day, from getting the call and travelling to Ottawa, her husband remained calm.
“He had made it a point over the past year to be very ready for this so he was ready,” she remarked.
“I’m sure he has anxiety but he didn’t show it very much,” she added. “He was just ready to get it done.”
DeGagne said the surgery got started around 1:15 a.m. and she didn’t see the surgeon again until 8:30 a.m.
“He came out to tell us that everything went well,” she recounted, adding that despite a long night of no sleep, she was not worried.
“I was very confident,” she remarked. “The surgeon talked to us beforehand when they were getting Nathan prepped.
“When I met him, I was really confident in him and I didn’t have too many nerves.
“I just really believed that Nathan was ready and he was going to do really well.”
Now one week after the surgery, DeGagne’s husband was recovering as expected.
“This is the third day he’s been awake,” she said Friday. “Because he had a device on his heart for the past 18 months, they say they always recover a little slower after that.
“So he is doing normally but it’s still pretty slow going right now,” DeGagne noted, though stressing everything looks very positive.
“He has to think about what he wants to say and his voice is very quiet right now because he had a ventilator in for six days,” she added.
“But he’s aware of where he is, he knows what happened, and he’s doing really well.”
DeGagne is spending her days going back and forth between a waiting room and his bedside.
“He’s in ICU so it’s hard to spend all our time beside him,” she explained. “But we do spend all our days at the hospital.”
They are staying right around the corner from the hospital at an intern residence.
And while there’s no word yet on when her husband will be able to leave Ottawa, DeGagne is expecting to be there for several weeks.
“He’s going to be moved from this hospital back to St. Boniface Hospital when he’s ready,” she explained.
“From there, we have to stay in Winnipeg for probably six-eight weeks after he is transferred back.
“I don’t know if that will change but as soon as we are able to, we plan to come back to Fort Frances,” DeGagne stressed.
“Until then, we are just taking it day by day and trying to get through this.”
There isn’t much people here in Fort Frances can do for the family for now. But if they feel so inclined, there is a donation account at the TD Bank that has been open since they had to move away last year.
DeGagne noted people also can register to be an organ donor.
“Every single registration gives families like ours hope,” she stressed. “We waited a long time for them to find the perfect heart for him.
“So I feel strongly that everyone should register and nobody is too old to register.”
DeGagne added she’s extremely grateful for the heart her husband was able to receive.
