A gift of thanks to the PA

Patients of the PA Hospital will benefit from the kindness of Brendan McCann’s decision to leave a gift in his will to the hospital’s charitable arm the PA Research Foundation for decades to come.

For Brendan, his decision to leave a bequest to the PA stems from his gratitude to the facility for saving his life, after his health took a turn for the worse.

Brendan underwent a liver transplant at the PA in 2019, an operation that gave him a new lease on life and allowed him to re-connect with his parents after an extended period of living in Central Queensland.  They also are leaving a bequest to the Foundation as a way of saying thank you for their son’s care.

Brendan suffered liver damage from a combination of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and a bout of leptospirosis which initially went undiagnosed at another hospital.

“I already had fatty liver disease and at the time that I started having liver problems in 2016/2017 while I was working for the agricultural colleges here in Queensland.  I went out to visit the colleges and I unfortunately picked up leptospirosis” he said.

“It doesn't really present as much worse than just a regular cold, and when you head to a GP with a cold, generally they are not going to prescribe you antibiotics, which as it turned out was probably all I needed.”

Brendan’s condition would deteriorate, and he would go to another Queensland hospital before being transferred to the PA when doctors realised his liver was failing. Brendan would eventually become the top priority transplant in Australia and New Zealand as his condition became so dire, he was told without a transplant he had only about 48 hours left to live.

“I ended up with my GP because I was very itchy all over in 2017 and spent a couple weeks in hospital, and they sort of let me go after two weeks because they were just thinking well, you've got liver problems and we don't really know what to do,” he said.

“It got much worse in 2019, I got really sick, and I was throwing up blood. That’s when they said we’re going to have to put you on the liver transplant list.  I then spent about six months at the PA and in recovery.

“It was really touch and go there for a while because they didn't know what caused the liver failure. They put me through a whole battery of tests and eventually, they found I had a long-standing leptospirosis infection.”

Thankfully for Brendan a liver donor was located and his care team at the PA rushed him into the operating theatre for a full liver transplant.

Thanks to the liver transplant and the PA, Brendan is now feeling well and while he was unable to return to his position at the St Vincent de Paul Society, has returned to work in a role he is thoroughly enjoying with DuluxGroup. The former ICT manager said leaving a portion of his estate to the PA was a very personal decision which stemmed from the gift of life given and the level of care provided to him at the PA, adding that he was also impressed by the digitisation of the campus.

“My parents made their decision to leave a bequest to the PA at the time I was discharged from the hospital, and I went to stay with them while I continued to recover. They said to me they wanted to do it to thank the PA, and so that it will hopefully help others,” Brendan said.

“It’s taken me a while to get to the point where I had the opportunity to organise my will, but I obviously wanted to do the same thing, because I feel it’s equally as important if not more so that as the recipient of the care and assistance of the PA that I did it also.

“I work in IT, and I was really impressed with the PA being the first digital hospital, having spent time at other hospitals and seeing the old paper-based systems and that type of thing and seeing everything having been switched over to digital at the PA, I thought it was fantastic.”

You can leave a legacy of better health outcomes for all, and lives saved just like Brendan has by making the PA Your place to give via the donate or gift in will buttons above.