Campaign to find an Ottawa firefighter a living liver donor a ‘massive success,’ as hospital begins screening potential matches

A 36-year-old Ottawa Firefighter has been struggling with a mysterious liver condition. Matt Gobey joined us live by video along with his Wife Michele Gobey.

An Ottawa firefighter with end-stage liver disease is optimistic about finding a donor, following an online campaign looking for a potential match for a living liver donor.

CTV News Ottawa shared the story of Matt Gobey on Tuesday, who is suspected of having primary sclerosing cholangitis. He is on the organ transplant list for a liver and needs a living donor with blood type O+, O-, A+ or A-.

Gobey told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll the campaign to find a living donor has been a success.

“We just got word, sort of indirectly from UHN (University Health Network), that the application call has gone fantastically well,” Gobey said Thursday morning.

“The message that we got from UHN, ‘Good morning, the Gobey campaign is a massive success, and we have far more than the donors we need.’ So, they are going to stop searching for donors for now.”

Gobey’s wife Michèle-Laure says she has been “crying all morning” since they received the notification.

“It doesn’t feel real. We’re so grateful to everybody in Ottawa, to CFRA, to you guys, because we wouldn’t have been able to do this without you,” Michèle-Laure said, noting the social media campaign had reached thousands of people.

“Thank you to everybody for sharing and just listening to us.”

Anyone interested in becoming a living donor needs to complete an extensive health history form through the University Health Network’s Living Liver Donor Program.

Michèle-Laure says the University Health Network will rank all the applications and “find the best match that they can think of and offer that person to get tested.”

Doctors will only test one donor at a time to find a match for Matt.

“Matt and I, we’re not going to hear anything until, I think, the donor picks a surgery day and then they call us,” Michèle-Laure said.

Gobey told CTV News Ottawa earlier this week that he’s been informed by doctors that “there is no fix for whatever’s wrong with me other than a transplant.”

Gobey is on the transplant list for a deceased donor but because the full severity of what’s going on with his liver isn’t captured by some of the criteria used to determine who is the highest priority on that list, doctors recommended he go the living donor route.

Gobey told Newstalk 580 CFRA that the University Health Network is asking them to continue to spread the word about donations.

“I’ve probably found my liver donor, but there are still a lot of people out there that aren’t as fortunate as I am,” Gobey said. “If you were considering donating your liver to me, we’re just asking people to, at this point, consider donating to someone else.”

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Katie Griffin