When most people think of liver, they think of something that's served with a side order of onions.
Not Sean Finch (shown).
He thinks of six weeks of pain and a good friend's life returned to her and says, 'why not?'
On May 16, Finch underwent seven hours of surgery at Toronto General Hospital to remove almost 3/4 of his liver, which was then transplanted into his classmate from Sault College, Jennifer Trozzo.
"Right after the surgery the pain wasn't too bad," he tells SooToday.com. "But a day or two afterward, it became very bad."
Finch is no stranger to post-operative pain and stress, either.
In August 2004, he was in a motorcycle crash just outside his hometown of London, Ontario.
The collision left him with a rod in his left leg to fuse it straight and numerous broken finger bones, scrapes and contusions.
"After that, I didn't think this would be all that bad," he said. "They said they would make an abdominal incision and remove a portion of my liver and it sounded pretty simple."
What they didn't say is that they would also have to spread his rib cage about six inches to access the liver.
"The ribs were the worst," he said. "After a couple days they got really painful."
But Finch said it was well worth it for his friend, Jen.
"Just before the surgery she was in pretty bad shape," he said. "She had no energy at all, her skin colour was very yellowish and she caught every cold and flu going around."
The day after their operations in Toronto, Trozzo got up out of her bed on her own and walked down the hall to see Finch.
"Before the two-week post-operative check up, Jen and I spent hours walking around Toronto," he said. "She couldn't have done that before!"
The two Sault College Occupational and Physiotherapy Technician Assistant students are both well along the road to recovery now.
Trozzo is due to come home from Toronto, where she's staying with her mom, by the end of June.
"She has to stay in a hotel near the hospital for a while longer," he said. "But she is getting real tired of it and feels she's ready to come home."
Finch said he feels noticeably better with every day that passes.
He also said he would do it again if they let him.
But they only let you give a piece of your liver once in a lifetime.
"A lot of my friends and some family members just thought I was crazy," he said. "But when you think about it, why not. I mean, it grows back in about two months, why not?"
Trozzo and Finch have no blood relation and only met when they started at Sault College in September 2006.
"There were a few of us [in the class] who were ready and willing to donate for Jen but they had to find a match," he said. "There was a 70 percent chance I wouldn't be a close enough match but everyone was surprised when I turned out to be a perfect match."
Doctors told Finch that his liver has almost completely regenerated and that the portion he donated for Trozzo has grown to almost the size of a normal human liver in her body and that it's functioning fine.
Finch said that, through the process, he learned that many people are waiting for liver transplants and many potential donors don't realize it's possible to donate while living and return to a completely normal life within two months after the procedure.
He said that risks from complications during the surgery are highly manageable and the recuperation time, while painful, is short and well worth the life of another person.
"Some people are choosing not to donate because of financial considerations, though," he said. "I had to go down to Toronto a few times for tests and preparation and again after for post-operative appointments."
Finch said Trozzo wanted to wait until after school finished for the year to undergo the surgery.
"That way we wouldn't miss any classes," he said. "But if we were not students and were working somewhere we would have had to take time off and likely without pay."
For the six- to eight-week post-operative period, Finch said he has been restricted from lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds and that he has had to give himself injections of blood-thinners twice daily.
In July 2006 the The Kidney Foundation of Canada (KFOC) and the BC Transplant Society implemented a Living Organ Donor Expense Reimbursement Program (LODERP) in the province of British Columbia.
This program may provide some financial assistance to living kidney and liver donors where no other source of funding is available and Finch said advocates across Canada are trying to get it implemented nationally to help decrease wait-times for life-saving transplants.
He also said he's considering further involvement with the Canadian Liver Foundation as a volunteer to help educate people about living organ donation.
For more information about the Canadian Liver Foundation, visit its website.