Gazette journalists share their memories of 2012.

MONTREAL - Do you faint at the sight of blood?

We had spent months organizing the coverage of a kidney exchange that was going to take place between six people in three cities.

This was no trivial detail for a photographer and a journalist team about to go into a Montreal operating room to document a kidney transplant. There would be sharp surgical tools: beeping electric scalpels that split apart layers of skin, muscle and fat. Then, a bloody cavity of an abdomen exposed.

Suddenly, the photographer put a hand to his forehead and said he didn’t feel so good.

The story started eight months earlier when we learned that Montreal television reporter Dominic Fazioli was going to be part of a living donor exchange program with strangers. Dominic could not donate directly to his father, Cosmo, who had endured kidney failure for nearly five years. His situation was critical. But Dominic would donate to a stranger who was a better match, and that person would return the favour by having a family member or friend donate to someone else. The swap between three couples based in Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal took place in August.

Dominic was keen to raise awareness about the potential effect of living donations helping other families in similar situations. The Fazioli family agreed to give The Gazette full access.

We hoped to speak with each donor/receiver pair, but transplant officials in Ottawa and Vancouver refused to broach the subject with the other families in the chain. They said that would not be possible because of a policy of patient confidentiality.

What if someone pulled out at the last minute and the whole chain fell apart? It had already happened once because a patient got too sick for a transplant. So no access would be granted.

But in the end, the Vancouver pair heard we were interested in their experience and told us their story happily.

“Living donation is the absolute way to go,” Steve Campbell said through tears of love for his wife, Melissa, who flew to Montreal to give her kidney to Dominic’s father.

But we didn’t know who the donor was when we changed into green surgical garb. Don’t touch anything, especially not sterile areas draped in blue, the nurses told us in operating room. I was just feeling grateful to be participating in this. By the way, there was very little blood flowing from the incision site. No one fainted. Although photographer Dario Ayala later confided that he got a wee bit queasy.

Three hours later, the big moment. Cosmo was going to get his new organ. Melissa’s kidney emerged from a red cooler, wrapped and tied like a gift.

And then surgeon Gabriel Chan said: “Watch this. The kidney is going to change colour.” He cut the clasps and the organ went from grey pallor to a glistening pink. Beautiful.

cfidelman@montrealgazette.com