#LoganBouletEffect and Green Shirt Day still inspire organ donors, 5 years after bus crash

Brandy Hehn has been reluctant in the past to talk about the organ transplants that saved her life.

She finds it painful — even traumatic — to relive her near death experiences, and to think about all the people she met at dialysis treatment who died waiting for a transplant. 

"In the week that I got my transplant, four people got kidneys and four people died. So it's like, you never know which way it's going to go," Hehn said.

She was diagnosed with a rare liver disease when she was just a teenager. In 2009, at the age of 25, her liver was shutting down, her skin and eyes were yellow, and doctors had predicted she'd be dead by the summer.

Hehn got the phone call for a liver transplant in March of that year.

She was worried she wouldn't be so lucky the next time.

In 2020, then in need of a kidney, Hehn only waited a few months on the transplant list. It might have been luck, but she credits the Logan Boulet Effect — a wave of organ donation registrations since 2018 inspired by the story of the young hockey player whose organ donations helped six people.

Her gratitude compelled her to overcome her anxiety, share her story and design the 2023 Green Shirt Day logo.

"I wanted to give [his parents] a thank you," Hehn said, for "organs and hope."

By now, most Canadians have likely heard Logan Boulet's story.

The 21-year-old Humboldt Broncos defenceman signed his organ card on his birthday –— five weeks before the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. He was inspired to become an organ donor by his fitness coach, Ric Suggitt, who passed in June 2017.

When Logan told his father Toby Boulet about his wishes, Toby joked, "Nobody wants your organs, you'll be 85."

WATCH |  Toby and Bernadine Boulet tell the story of donating Logan's