Alberta’s only double living donor shares story to raise organ donation awareness
Posted Sep 15, 2026 11:46 pm.
When Meghan Rozema made the decision to be a living donor in 2020, she wanted to make an impact and save someone else’s life.
She donated part of her liver and a kidney to two strangers. And it all started with a social media post she saw in 2018.
“So what solidified my decision to donate part of my liver is putting myself in the parents’ shoes of that little baby who would die without this transplant,” Rozema said. “So after that, it was just a no-brainer.
“Just seeing someone on social media asking for a kidney planted the seed.”
Rozema is sharing her story during Living Donation Week to raise awareness about organ donation. She says knowing she was able to save lives was life-changing.
“It’s very rewarding personally,” she explained. “But I didn’t do it for myself. “I know that somebody else out there needs this life-changing surgery.”
While she describes her donation journey as a minor inconvenience, the mother of three from Sherwood Park, east of Edmonton, is the only person in Alberta who’s donated two organs while still alive. She’s also one of just few double living donors in Canada.
“My kids are very proud of me, absolutely,” she said. “My one daughter had an assignment at school to talk about her hero, so she talked about me and the plasma donation, and then the double organ donation.”
Cassandra Garneau with Give Life Alberta, the province’s organ and tissue donation program, called Rozema a “hero, multiple times over.”
“What strikes me about her case is that it’s not really the rarity of it, but it’s the fact that she made that extraordinary decision to help two people, and in her case, complete strangers,” Garneau said.
More than 500 Albertans are waiting for life-saving transplants.
Garneau says Living Donation Week is an opportunity to celebrate living donors like Rozema and to help improve access to living kidney and liver donation.
“For livers, it means getting a chance to live, and for kidneys, you get your life back, your family back,” said Garneau, the organization’s living donor coordinator. “You get off dialysis, or you never, ever have to have the burden of getting on dialysis.”
When asked about her health, Rozema, who’s a volleyball coach, said sometimes she even forgets that she underwent two donation surgeries. She hopes her story helps inspire others to donate and help save lives.
