Dominic LeBlanc: “The transplant team supported me through the most difficult period of my life”
Dominic LeBlanc is in good shape. On a visit to Montreal, the federal cabinet minister was keen to meet with us at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, affiliated with Université de Montréal, to share his story and thank the care team that treated him. Here’s what he told us:
I consider myself extremely lucky. When I look back on what I went through, I know the outcome could have been completely different.
In April 2019, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer. Two years earlier, I had overcome chronic lymphocytic leukemia. At Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, New Brunswick’s largest French-language hospital, the doctors had to keep adjusting the treatments as we went along. Fortunately, the chemotherapy worked. That was the prerequisite for considering a transplant.
My hematologist-oncologist in Moncton referred me to Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, in east-end Montreal, where Dr. Sylvie Lachance, one of Quebec’s leading transplant specialists, was practicing. She agreed to take me on personally. I arrived at the end of August.
I had to stay in complete isolation for 71 days, in a small room on the fifth floor of the hospital. It was before they built the IHOT. Meanwhile, the federal election campaign was in full swing. When (then-Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau came to Montreal for the leaders’ debate on TVA, he dropped by to see me at the hospital. Later he told me, “I didn’t think I was going to see you again.”
The first month, my white blood-cell count was zero. Every morning, they gave me my results. Zero. Zero. Zero. Then, over Thanksgiving weekend—I’ll never forget it—Dr. Lachance walked in with a smile. She said, “It’s working! We’ve got 100 neutrophils. Tomorrow it’ll be 200, then 400, then 800…” The transplant had finally taken.
When I was discharged in early November, it was fall. I’d lost 40 pounds and I didn’t even have a coat. I was so happy to go shopping! And I’d been re-elected to Parliament in Beauséjour riding.
I was lucky to have a perfectly matched donor: a 20-year-old German man, Jonathan Kehl. In Germany, the donor registry is well-established. He had no idea who I was. All he’d been told was that there was a man in Canada who was going to die. Without him, I wouldn’t be here.
We met three years after the transplant, first via video conference, then in Ottawa. I took him fishing in New Brunswick. He has just completed his teaching degree and wants to come back this summer to see the Rockies. I’m going to take him.
What I remember most is the quality of care at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. Absolutely everyone, from the support staff to the doctors, was friendly, remarkably kind and professional. I never had a negative experience. Not one.
And, as hematologist Imran Ahmad said publicly at a charity event, I’m cured!
I still go back to the hospital every few months. I see people I care about, who stood by me during the most difficult period of my life and literally saved my life. They’re always in good spirits. Coming back here, for whatever reason, is always a positive experience for me.
Has it changed me? I haven’t had any epiphanies. When you’re a cabinet minister, you know that everything is temporary. But I do feel I lost a bit of my life with the illness and then COVID-19. Today, I want to make up for lost time and seize every opportunity. Everything is exciting!
I’m convinced of one thing: without that transplant, without that team, without that young donor, I probably wouldn’t have celebrated my 51st birthday. One day, I’ll be able to sit on the patio of my home by the sea in New Brunswick.
People often talk about the problems in the healthcare system, but perhaps we don’t take enough time to celebrate the successes. What I’ve been through is a story of human, medical and scientific success. It makes me very happy to be able to celebrate it.
In Quebec, healthy individuals aged 18 to 35 can register as stem cell donors with Héma-Québec.
