Page 8 - Report to Our Community 2018/19

Inspire, invent and deliver
tomorrow’s care.

Transplant

journey

How sports and a family saved a man’s life

Sports and family have always been a great part of
David Roberts’ life. From basketball, football and
hockey in his youth to triathlon later in his life,
sports were a way of being connected with his
loved ones and keeping active.

Training hard was part of David’s routine for as long
as he could remember. That’s why when he started
feeling overtired and had difficulty breathing about
six years ago, he knew something wasn’t right.
David and Susan Roberts
David had Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).
It’s a disease doctors don’t know the cause of and
which has no effective cure other than transplant.

IPF affects an estimated 15,000 people in Canada. A retired teacher with two children and four
It causes scarring in the lungs which progressively grandchildren, David, now age 66, got into triathlon
become thick and stiff until the patient can’t breathe. in his 50s with the main goal of having a new challenge
Without transplant, the life expectancy of a patient and sharing it with his son and daughter, who had
with IPF is three to five years. recently engaged in the sport.

“I always took pride in being a person that can put And it really was a challenge. David is from Prince
up with anything, and I got hit by a disease that Edward Island and lived most of his adult life in New
had no known cause, and there was very little I
could do to stop it,” David says. “It was a shocker, Brunswick, but until then he didn’t know how to swim.
but together with my family, I found the strength
to keep moving forward.” “People assume we from New Brunswick or P.E.I.
know how to swim, but we don’t,” he says. “We work
When he fell sick, David was actually training for in the water, we don’t play in the water.
one of the hardest endurance races in the world –
the Ironman – which includes a 3.8-kilometre swim, “I was on my couch eating chips, watching them
180-kilometre bicycle ride and marathon run race and I thought to myself – I can do this. I know
(42.2 kilometres), and takes an average participant how to run and to bike, if I just learn how to swim I
12 hours to finish. can join them.”

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