The Current - Would you become a living donor to a stranger?

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

One Canadian dies every two days waiting for an organ. Stephanie Azzarello feared she'd be one of them. For people waiting for a liver, like Azzarello, there’s an option to find a living donor. Usually it comes from a family member or close friend… but not always. The woman who offered to help Azzarello after seeing her social media post was a stranger who lived in another country, had never met her. In her documentary, Because of Her, Liz Hoath brings us their story — and how their lives were brought together.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It is a simple fact in Canada. The demand for transplant organs outweighs the supply. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, in 2024, more than 4,000 people were waiting for an organ that could save their life. More than 200 people died while waiting. For people who are waiting for a liver, there is an option to find a living donor. Sometimes the transplant happens more quickly than waiting for a liver from someone who's died.

Usually the donation comes from a family member or a close friend, but not always. University Health Networks, Asmara Transplant Center in Toronto, is the biggest in North America. Last year, they did 13 non-directed liver donations. That means 13 people giving up part of their liver for someone they don't know. There have already been 15 this year, all successful. Today, Liz Hoth brings us the story of two people who found themselves in that situation. Here's her documentary, because of her. Hello, would you guys like donuts?

You change our mind. Oh, yay, okay. We get two, please. Of course. They're $2 each. That's fine. Okay. Cash.

This is where I come almost every day of my life, and I love it. I love it so much. I love the sound of the students. and they're laughing and yelling and selling donuts. It's the sound of life. Campus is buzzing as Stephanie Azarello heads into work at the University of Toronto. She's a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer in the Art History Department. And there's a reason she revels in the sounds of life.

Stephanie was near death a couple of years ago. And the reason she's here, back at work, is because of her. the kindness of a complete stranger. Thank you for supporting. It's for a school of Kenya. There's a couple of things about Stephanie that you figure out pretty quickly. It's so nice to meet you. Can I hug you? She's a hugger. 15 months ago. The only thing I was worried about was getting through the day.

And a talker. And I know that sounds dramatic. The first time we meet, her story just tumbles out. I know, I'm sorry I could talk. I can, you know. How are you doing today? Oh, my, I feel amazing. When people ask, how are you? I will say, I'm terrific, because I will take it, because I don't know what's going to happen. I can't spend my precious healthy days now worrying what may or may not happen.

To know why these days are so precious, you have to look back. The first sign of health trouble was the spring of 2012. Stephanie was 27, and she was just finishing her undergrad at the U of T. She got sepsis. At first, they thought it was just a fluke infection, but worrying test results followed, and it was more than a year later that she got the official diagnosis.

She had a rare autoimmune liver disease called primary sclerosing colongitis, or PSC. And that was the first time that I really panicked. I was told there is no treatment and there is no cure. and that potentially one day I might need a liver transplant. And it was just a waiting game because no treatment, no cure, means you just go forward and watch how things develop. And go forward she did to do her Ph.D. in art history at Cambridge in the U.K.

PSC is notorious for being dormant for a long time and then becoming very active. So you almost get tricked into thinking it's not really there or it's not a problem. problem and then it pounces and it's awful. It's awful. Back to Toronto she went and she was in and out of the hospital constantly. The PSC was out of control and unmanageable. The jaundice, it was the itching. It was, you know, the liver is the main organ of digestion. So my digestion was extremely compromised. I was becoming malnourished. It was awful. I was nauseous all the time. And again, we managed to somehow stabilize me because modern medicine. So, since she was stable, off she went to Italy to do postdoc research.

I had a wonderful time in Florence. I made friends. I learned Italian. I went to the sea. I went to Rome. I bought shoes. I looked at art. It was wonderful. A wonderful year that ended with scary news. Something had come up on a regular scan of her liver. Her hepatologist was worried it could be cancer. It wasn't, but there was so much scarring the time had come. She needed a new liver. She went back to Toronto to start the process of getting on the provincial waiting list.

I also had what's called sleep reversal, so I'd be up all day, and then I'd come home and start the graveyard shift. You're up more or less all night. I was starting to develop severe brain fog. I would call it my lavender haze, because I'd just felt like I was in a cloud all the time and I couldn't really follow conversations and reading and comprehending were challenging and I would forget conversations I was having with people

20 minutes after I had them. I couldn't remember who I was talking to. Through it all, Stephanie was determined to keep working. You know, I would come in looking dreadful and people would say, oh, hey, you look good today. Even though it was a lie, a bold-faced lie, But I... Well, you did. I would take it.

You did. You put yourself really well together, and, you know, your outfits... Margaret English has been the department librarian for more than 20 years. She wore a specific tone of orange lipstick that really went well with the jaundice. She describes herself as a matronly anti-figure to Stephanie. Her gray hair is pulled back, and she's wearing a black heavy metal t-shirt. Mastodon is emblazoned across the front. Physically, I saw her changing color, you know, and losing.

a bit of weight, but just her attitude was incredible at all times. Like, I am going to beat this. Stephanie kept getting sicker, until finally she had to take a leave from teaching. But she still went into the office as much as she could. They put her desk out in the open so everyone could keep an eye on her. One time she threw up in a recycling bin, she fell over and was taken to the hospital. To be honest, I thought we were going to lose her, but I didn't tell her. You know, email, were exchanged amongst our colleagues. Like, have you seen Stephanie? She's not looking great.

I'm really worried. You were turning funny colors, dear. Yeah. In a way, the lavender haze was a blissful, protective force because I couldn't consciously think about the fact that, yes, without an organ, I will die. Without a new liver, I will die. In Canada, one person dies every two days,

waiting for an organ. In 2024, there were more than 650 liver transplants. Another 600 people were waiting, and 89 died on that wait list. By the summer of 2023, Stephanie is on the list. She's waiting for a liver from a deceased donor. But she was told that she was very, very unlikely to ever get a liver that way. Patients are prioritized through the model for end-stage liver disease. it's known as the Meld Score, and it takes the results of a few blood tests to determine how urgently someone needs a liver. The Meld score for someone like me, for a woman

and a woman with a rare liver disease, the Melds score doesn't factor in our particular metabolic systems and the way our bodies manifest illness. And so all of that is to say my Melds score remained extremely low, even though I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. Stephanie was told her best hope was to find a living donor. So here's the thing about the liver. It actually grows back to full size in both the donor and the recipient

by about three months after the surgery. Still, you have to find someone willing to undergo that pretty major surgery. It was excruciatingly vulnerable, but I was between the ultimate rock and a hard place. it was either tell people and try to find an organ or die. No one in Stephanie's family or close circle of friends was a suitable match. So the next step was to go public. I mean, I'm not asking for directions.

I'm asking for a vital organ. And it was terrifying, but I knew I didn't have a choice. The public campaign started in November of 2023, but it took a couple of months before it really took off on social media. and it was early in 2024 when her face popped up on a phone late one night in Portland, Oregon. I was kind of an insomniac during that time period because my child was, oh gosh, not even a year and a half old. And he was waking up several times in the middle of the night, crying. And so I would be feeding him and soothing him.

Trisha Beard is a nurse with two young kids. She doesn't gloss over what life is like right now. It's a lot of chaos. I think there are a lot of. of parents with young kids that feel like you're kind of just watering and feeding and cleaning of the children. It's a lot of chaos. Her son had just fallen asleep in her arms, and she was scrolling social media to lull her own brain back to sleep when she saw Stephanie's post. It turns out we're only five days apart. Like we're born in the same week. So we've been on this planet the same amount of time. We're obviously in very different stages of our life, but her having been through so much sickness for so many years. I think that might be one of the things that

struck me too was just that I think I could put myself in her shoes of, you know, what that would look like and feel like a little bit. And the idea that there was something possibly that I could do that would make that better for another human that was suffering. I think that really drew me in. In late February, I got a message and it was from a woman named Tricia. And she just said hi, she said, I'm really, really interested in putting in an application for you. For small business owners, there's strength in numbers. Chambers Plan Employee Benefits brings together 32,000 businesses across Canada in a pooled benefits plan designed to help keep premiums manageable. Get flexible group benefits like health, dental, disability, travel

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Stephanie was skeptical. For one, she didn't want to get her hopes up, especially since Trisha lived in the U.S. So she didn't engage, and she told Trisha to follow the links in the post. So Trisha reached out to the people handling Stephanie's campaign, to find out the next steps. Her transplant team manager told me that I couldn't donate to her. I couldn't be assessed because I was American and she's Canadian. For some people, this might have been case closed. But Trisha wasn't ready to give up.

So she decided she wanted to hear no from the hospital directly. I just kind of went back to the original posting and back to the original information and submitted my paperwork in the middle of the night to them when I was up again feeding Richie. and within two hours I got a phone call and I guess my phone was on and my husband's like, why is someone calling you in the middle of the night? And it was the hospital, it was the transplant team reaching out to me.

They had received my application and they wanted to know how soon, you know, when I could come next month. They were basically like, we want to get you in here within a few weeks. Can you come? When can you come? She hung up and explained to her husband who it was and what they wanted. They both agreed. She should go and get tested.

So a few weeks later, she finds herself in Toronto getting screened in the same hospital where Stephanie is once again a patient. And so she said all the tests went well and it's looking very promising and they're going to meet next week. But at that point, we kind of had a preliminary green light and I said, you know, I'm here, I'm leaving. Tomorrow, is there any chance you want to have a coffee? And I realized I have to meet this woman. I got a message that night saying, you want to come and meet me in the morning? And I saw her and I just made a beeline for her.

I may have pulled out my ivy because she was real and she was three feet away from me. I just grabbed her and I held her so tightly because I thought, what if she just evaporates? And the second she saw me walk past that doorway, she immediately knew and I immediately knew, and we embraced and we just, both of us cried. And I just said, I love you. I love you. I love you. Because that is what I felt. I felt this incredible overwhelming gush of love for this stranger. And she looked at me and she said, I love you too. this other human being in another country felt so deeply from what I was going through that she had to do this. It was just, it felt like a fit of like, yep, let's do this. We talked about, I can't believe you're doing this and how are you doing this and why are you doing this? But then we got to just talking and we talked for well over an hour.

I told us Mr. Plain Home because she talks as much as I do. Honestly, in that moment when we were sitting there, she was obviously very sick. And my just thoughts went to, why can't we do this now? Why can't we just make a spot in the schedule? Let's make it happen. Let's do it today. Tricia flew home, and the following week they got the news. They were a match.

I think the word exciting comes to mind, but there's a lot of things. I am very aware that this was a very serious surgery. And so my odds were good, but I also knew that there was a chance that things wouldn't go the way that we had expected. And so it was really exciting to be able to say, yay, like, let's do this. Let's move forward. There was a little bit of nervousness and a little bit of hesitation just because, okay, we're doing this. This is real. My body's about to change.

It's still emotional for Trisha to talk about that time. I mean, it reminds me that I did write my children letters just in case, just on the chance that something did go sideways and just on the chance that, you know, things were not meant to end, you know, on a happy note or things weren't meant to, you know, continue. But yeah, I knew that was a possibility, so. Do you mind me asking what was in those letters? Oh, yeah, just how much I love them and how much I was, you know, have been so happy to be their mom and happy to be in their lives and so happy that they were brought into the world and how much I want for them for their future and good things in their life and their journey.

She admits she was scared, but she says she never thought about changing her mind. I come from a religious family, and so I felt like this was part of God's calling, and so I felt like God is calling me to her and has made a way for this to happen and has made a green light. Those are things that I can't do. I can't be the right candidate just because I want to be. I can't make the pathway open just because I want it to be open. And the pathway was opened, and I felt like, okay, we're here. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm just sitting in this and trusting that this is going to work out the way that it's meant to. The surgery was set for June 12, 2024. Trisha went in first, then Stephanie, and 12-5 hours later, part of Trisha's liver had a new home. The first thing I remember is how I felt different.

my body felt different. My skin felt soft. The mental clarity was unbelievable. The lavender haze had totally lifted. Everything was normalizing because I now had this incredibly healthy organ. She's family. She'll always be family. I mean, she is my best friend. We talk all the time. We message at least times. Hi. How are you? Hi, darling. I'm good.

How are you? Oh, I'm so good. I'm so good. Veronica's so good. Oh, I love the scar. You might be wondering who Veronica is. Before Stephanie even met Tricia, she felt so sure she was getting a new liver from someone that she named it, Veronica.

The name Veronica means true icon. And I thought, this organ is, it's the one, it's the true one. It's my perfect match. And she has such a great personality, which I know might sound deranged. But she is a workhorse and she's just perfection. She's like Trisha. She's just a dream come true. But Veronica, my God, I mean, she just like superstar.

Come on. I love it. Is that the shirt your dad got you? That my dad made for us. What does it say? It says liver, donor, because who wouldn't want a piece of this? It's such a terrible. Trisha didn't tell her parents what was happening until after she woke up from the surgery.

She admits there was some anger at first, but now they're clearly on board. I love your scar. Trish lifts up the t-shirt so they can both admire the big scar on her abdomen. It's not guilt, but it's a sense of, you know, that's your body and knowing that you're okay with your scar. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's proof that Veronica became yours. Oh, my God. I mean, you gave me the best liver. I had bloods on Tuesday, and they are perfect. She, Billy Rubin is so low, which you know is my... They talk about recovery. They had to take Trisha's gallbladder out as part of the surgery.

She's still feeling the effect of that. Yeah, yeah, I'd say hilariously, the only, like, hiccup in the whole last year is that when I eat junk food, my body doesn't like it. Shocking. They talk about how different Stephanie looks now. Your cheeks are bright. Your makeup is beautiful. What are these earrings? Tell me about your earrings. They talk for more than an hour. I should probably go just because I do have to teach and prep, but can we talk next week?

Yeah. I love you. Luck with your teaching day. Bye. In the classroom, Stephanie tests out the projection system as students start trickling in. So, yeah, it's Fantasia today. Last week we did Snow White. There's a wait list for her fourth year seminar

on how medieval and renaissance art have influenced Disney. Hello, hi Anna. Hi, Claire. Hi, Ying. She relishes in the little things, like remembering names, something she couldn't do when she was so sick. Okay, I think we should start with the most obvious vignette. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a poem written by Goethe in 1797.

So we're going to watch a clip of this, and then we're going to go from there. For someone so chatty, so eloquent, Stephanie admits she still struggles to find the words to describe what Trisha did for her. My interior sense of what I've been through doesn't know how to comprehend that, that a stranger stepped forward for nothing. You know, she's not paid. She returns to her life as a nurse and a mom and a neighbor and a friend. and there's no outward public recognition. I look at it like her life was going to get saved no matter what. I just feel like I was honored and blessed to be the one to be up close to it, you know,

to be able to watch it transpire and then to be able to also give of my own energy and lifeblood for its success. You think that that's an honor for you. Yes. It's such a sacred experience. It's such a sacred time frame. and so to be a part of it is just it's an honor it's reinforced my sense of human kindness in the world and i have a new sense of being present in this moment because i don't know what's going to happen a year from now or five years from now or ten years from now no one does but i have this moment i have

you know this healthy moment given to me by my beautiful organ by my beautiful organ donor and i'm not to waste those healthy, precious days worrying. I just live my life. And there are moments where I forget I've had a transplant. But I just live my life. I didn't give birth to a third life, but I was able to give life a third time, if that makes sense. The first two being my children that I brought into this world, but the third one being a human life that I got to help with the continuance of. And so I like to tell Stephanie that Veronica was hers all along.

I was just holding on to her until she was ready for. Today, Stephanie does everything she can to take care of Veronica. Even when she's out of her apartment just for a couple of minutes, she heads straight for the sink when she's back inside. She goes for her monthly blood tests. So that's my pill. And a cat alarm reminds her at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. sharp to get out her Tupperware full of pill bottles. It's 12 in the morning, and it is 9 at night. Yeah. There's one more routine she sticks to every day.

I kind of think of this as a bit of an altar. On her fridge, there's a collage of pictures, all of Trish, with her family, with Stephanie in the hospital. So I look at this every morning, and I will come out and just. kiss her face because to me she is my saint. She performed a miracle. Stephanie kisses her finger and then presses it on to the photo. Every morning, every morning because, you know, I'm alive because of her. And you just say it that simply, I am alive because of her. That documentary was produced by Liz Hoth at the CBC's audio documentary unit. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.