Candis “Candy” Stewart was able to enjoy more of life’s precious moments after undergoing the first successful kidney transplant in Ottawa.
She was born with tiny kidneys, although the congenital disease wasn’t detected until she started suffering from symptoms at age six.
Her younger sister, Shannon, spent much of her childhood at the Civic, waiting by the elevators while her parents visited Candy. Siblings weren’t permitted to visit, but once in a while, they’d sneak her upstairs to visit from a distance.
After many long stays in hospital, Candy’s kidneys shut down completely and had to be removed by the time she was 16, making her completely dependent on dialysis machines. Her mother donated one of her kidneys to try and save her daughter’s life.
Dr. Alan Irvine was the head surgeon and part of a 25-person team who performed the historic and complex eight-hour operation on May 10th,1966 at the Civic.
While the procedure was successful, sadly, Candy’s body rejected her mother’s transplant, and a second transplant, and she died in 1969.
The extra years she gained following her transplant allowed her to graduate from high school as an Ontario Scholar and receive her acceptance letter from the University of Ottawa, where she planned to study science.
Shannon went on to become an X-ray tech at the Civic, and says, “Candy was very fortunate to have such good people looking after her. They gave us so much.”
Much has changed since that first transplant, and we now perform more than 100 transplants each year, and follow more than 1,000 transplant patients in our clinic at the Riverside Campus. We are also a world-leader in kidney transplant research.
