I'm so grateful to be able to describe myself as a "normal working mom."

I’m alive today, able to care for my young son, and able to enjoy special moments like our recent vacation thanks to the expertise of the amazing staff at VGH - B.C.’s centre for specialized health care.

Click on "Catharine's Story" at the top of this page to see my video testimonial, or read on to learn more.

I never thought this would be the first mother-son portrait in my family album. I don't remember anything about my son's birth, or my first moments as a mother, because shortly after the delivery, my major organ systems began shutting down. Within 5 days of giving birth via emergency c-section, I slipped into a coma. It turned out that I had developed a rare, pregnancy-related illness called acute fatty liver of pregnancy. While my son Dylan grew stronger in another hospital, I was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital where medical teams in the Intensive Care Unit waged a battle for my life.

VGH is the only hospital in BC where the staff had the expertise to deal with my rare illness. I rapidly developed liver failure, kidney failure, respiratory failure, jaundice, severe edema (swelling of my whole body), and acute inflammation of the pancreas – and the combination was killing me.

The staff acted immediately. They performed four plasma exchanges, recycling all the plasma in my body in order to save my life.

Eventually, I was stabilized enough to be sent home to get to know my son. That was the first time the medical teams at VGH saved my life.

However, for the next 17 months I continued to be terribly ill. I was unable to digest food, suffered from malabsorption, remained 25 pounds underweight, and my hair fell out. My husband took a year off work to care for our son. No one could figure out what was wrong with me, because tests on my organs kept showing no problems. Then an acute pancreatic attack landed me back at VGH, with Dr. Mike Byrne of the Gastroenterology department.

Dr. Byrne quickly became my hero. He sent me to another hospital site for an Endoscopic Ultrasound - and that proved an invaluable tool in immediately ruling out cancer - a possible cause of my pancreas shutting down.

(An Endoscopic Ultrasound is a flexible instrument equipped with a miniature camera and ultrasound device. It travels through the digestive tract to show tissue and digestive organs in extreme detail. It can help diagnose illness, rule out cancer or needless surgery, and can even be used to help treat cancer.)

After ruling out cancer, Dr. Byrne performed more tests on my pancreas. He recommended that I take pancreatic enzymes to help my digestion, restoring the enzymes my own pancreas could no longer produce. Amazingly, I became a healthy person again within two months! Dr. Byrne literally gave me my life back! I was able to take care of my son again, gain back weight, and even start working after a long hiatus. Today, I see Dr. Byrne for regular monitoring of my damaged pancreas, but between visits, I am a normal working mom.

Dr. Byrne and his team need an Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) at VGH so that patients won’t have to be transferred to other sites for this test. Your gift to the in it for life Fund will help buy an EUS and other specialized equipment like it. More patients can benefit from faster, more accurate diagnoses of illnesses, including cancers of the lung, esophagus, stomach, pancreas and colon.

I want other patients to benefit from the excellent care offered at VGH, including the kind of precise diagnostic screening that helped my doctors quickly restore my health.

If you have supported the hospitals in the past, I thank you. If you're considering your first gift today, believe me when I say that your crucial gift will help thousands of patients from across the province. Please click to donate now: Donate

Thank you,

Catharine Martin
VGH patient