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Bound for transplant games

City man with dad's kidney to compete in Australia

By: Melissa Martin

Posted: 08/1/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

At 22, Dave Wladyka is the picture of good health. He's toned, tanned and brimming with energy, thanks to a summer of cycling around Birds Hill Park and bopping volleyballs on the beach.

So you wouldn't guess that Wladyka isn't toting his original kidneys.

Wladyka is getting ready to head to Australia for the 2009 World Transplant Games. There, he'll join 3,000 other transplant-athletes from more than 70 countries to compete for gold in the biannual event.

"Whether you're competing for the national hockey team, or at the World Transplant Games, you're still representing Canada," the Windsor Park resident beams. "It's not very often that you get to do that."

Mom Jocelyne, on the other hand, admits she's a little nervous: "once your baby, always your baby," she sighs. But then again, she has good reason to feel protective. At age six, Wladyka's body triggered an allergic reaction to a minor virus. Doctors put a stop to the violent immune response, but not before it left his scarred kidneys functioning at half-normal levels.

Still, he had an active childhood, playing soccer and dreaming about the big time. But when Wladyka hit his adolescent growth spurts, the puttering organs finally gave out. Luckily, his father turned out to be a donor match. Still, the 15-year-old spent four months on dialysis before he and his dad went under the knife in June 2002.

The family jokes about it now; when son asks father for a favour, dad quips "what, a kidney isn't enough for you?" But "it definitely tied a stronger bond between the two of us," Wladyka says.

The teen's recovery was brisk. Within four months, he was back on the soccer field and back to his studies at Collège Beliveau. True, to maintain his borrowed kidney, he'll have to take anti-rejection and blood pressure drugs for the rest of his life.

But it could have been worse. He could have ended up waiting for a donor kidney to arrive, like 150 other Manitobans. He could have become even sicker.

"Nothing could have gone better, smoother or easier," he says. "I was lucky, I never felt that sick from it. After my kidney transplant, it was more of a mental thing... You feel like you have something working inside of you."

He'll get to show the world just how well his kidney works while at the Transplant Games, which kick off on Australia's Gold Coast on August 22. Wladyka is signed up to compete in the 100- and 200-metre sprints, the 100-metre relay, and the five-kilometre cycle race; he'll also play for the Canadian national transplant volleyball team, which won gold at the 2007 Games.

But though Wladyka's sporting hopes are modest -- making the finals in the sprints would make him "very happy," he says he is really aiming at convincing others to sign donor cards.

"The main motivator for me to compete is to show the world, and show Winnipeg, that organ donation can work," says Wladyka, who is majoring in geography at the University of Manitoba.

"The lists are high for people waiting. And hopefully, if people can see a benefit from someone receiving a transplant, it would make them enthusiastic about donating."

For more information on organ donation, visit TransplantManitoba.ca.

-- The Lance

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 1, 2009 B2

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