A friend, neighbour and life saver: A Squamish story of hope and gratitude

I am 51 years old and have called Squamish home for 23 years. I’m a dad and husband and have lived an active and healthy Sea-to-Sky lifestyle.

I have Stage 4 Colorectal Cancer (CRC) that metastasized to my liver. After multiple major surgeries and years of hard chemotherapy, I was placed on palliative care. Grasping for options, I found a small clinical trial at Toronto General Hospital’s Ajmera Transplant Centre that provides Living Donor Liver Transplants for CRC patients with tumours only in the liver. Trials elsewhere were showing promising life-extending and potentially curative results. The selection criteria and testing were rigorous, and I finally got word that I was accepted into the program in November 2023.

To avoid taking a liver from someone with advanced liver disease, the program required that I find my own living donor (108 people died waiting for a cadaver liver in Canada in 2022). In essence, I needed to find someone who was both a match and willing to undergo a major surgery to donate part of their liver and save my life.

The race was on. The math was poor. I was sick, and it takes four candidates to undergo extensive testing to find a confirmed match. Each candidate could take 3-4 months to test, and there were only resources to test one candidate at a time. My immediate family were not candidates; I would likely be out of time if a suitable donor were not found early. I was stressed. For the first time in my life, I used social media’s outreach, and I put my plea for help out there, and our community responded overwhelmingly.

To this day, I still don’t know precisely why my good friend Jeff Cooke, who lives only a few houses away, was selected to be the first candidate tested. Fate intervened, and after rigorous testing in Toronto, he was confirmed! A surgery date was chosen, and on January 15th, both Jeff and I underwent surgery in Toronto, where my cancerous liver was removed, and part of Jeff’s healthy liver was placed in me.

Jeff saved my life on that day. He put his busy life and business on hold to undergo a major surgery and recovery in Toronto in the middle of winter. Jeff has fully recovered, and our livers have grown to nearly full size. To date, I have no evidence of disease. I am being monitored closely, and my recovery will take some time, but I am optimistic about my future, thanks to Jeff and the transplant team in Toronto.

Jeff and I have been buddies since he moved down the street, but now we share an inseparable bond as liver brothers. Words are poor tools to express my gratitude for his gift, but I will live my life to the fullest and try to be as selfless and impactful as Jeff Cooke has been. Hopefully, the clinical trials will demonstrate continued positive results, and this surgery will save more lives in Canada. Please register as an organ donor and consider being a living donor at BC Transplant: transplant.bc.ca. 

For more information and support for patients and caregivers, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Colorectal Cancer Resource & Action Network.

Tim Hoskin is a senior official at the District of Squamish and has lived in the community for over two decades.