A young Ottawa woman's hopes to raise awareness for organ donation as she heads to Toronto to await a new pair of lungs was one of the area's hottest Twitter trends Thursday, fuelled in part by attempts to get Canadian pop idol Justin Bieber and his fans in on the campaign.
The plight of Hélène Campbell, whose need of new lungs was featured in a recent Citizen series about organ transplants, became a focus of the Twitterverse after a friend of hers, Kelly Logan, started a movement to urge people to tweet Bieber's account (@ justinbieber) in the hope that more people will go online to beadonor.com to register to be organ donors. The province's rate of registration, as well as that of Ottawans, is at 20 per cent.
"We decided to tweet Justin Bieber because he's Canadian and has lots of fans," Campbell said on Thursday. "We hope it will raise awareness.
"It's super easy and lives can be saved."
While no word has yet been heard from Bieber, his musical director and guitarist, Dan Kanter, re-tweeted the message, asking others to spread the word of her story.
A video, made by Logan and featuring Campbell, was put on YouTube on Tuesday (http: //bit.ly/zVEH5R), and has since attracted close to 9,000 views.
And while she knows it's not likely to help her in her plight, Campbell says she's glad she can turn her negative situation into something positive.
"I'm a Belieber that Justin Bieber will help us raise awareness for organ donations," she joked.
A 20-year-old Barrhaven resident, Campbell was diagnosed in July with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Her lungs, scarred and inflamed, are currently working at less that onequarter capacity.
In a story that appeared in the Citizen on Jan. 3, she lamented that she didn't know if her failing lungs would last until a new pair could be found.
"I'm dealing with it," she said at the time.
"What other choice do I have? I can't avoid this; this is something I have to deal with, and so far I'm doing well."
Last Friday, she received a phone call from the Toronto General Hospital, asking her to move to Toronto to begin the wait for lungs. She and her mother, Manon Roy Campbell, left Ottawa on Thursday, and will stay in an apartment of a friend's friend, just five blocks from the hospital, the only facility in the province that performs lung transplants.
She will see a surgeon next Wednesday, and expects to then officially be put on the waiting list.
"He'll give me a pager," she said, "and then I'll officially be waiting.
"Right now I'm just waiting to be waiting."
She adds that she's been given a Priority 2 designation, the middle of three available options. Priority 3 patients, she says, are the most urgent cases, while those in the Priority 1 category face longer wait times.
"I'm where I want to be. Moving to Toronto is a step forward. Being on the list is another step forward, and then it's just a matter of getting the right size and type of lungs.
"Hopefully it won't take four years."
Still, the wait may be a daunting one: she's only been told that the average wait in Ontario for lungs is between six months and two years.
Her schedule while in Toronto includes three weekly three-hour physiotherapy sessions, as well as a weekly support group with others in similar situations.
For the rest, she's taken plenty of books with her, as well as lots of videos that she and her friends have shot over the past two years, with the intent of editing them.
"I'm also going to ride the subway from one end to the other," she said.
"The rest of the time," she added, "I'll be waiting."
source: ottawacitizen
