When he was 10 days old, Grady suffered a stroke. He spent over 2 months in the NICU, where he was diagnosed with Congenital Nephrotic Syndrome (Finnish type). Basically, his kidneys filtered out the bad, but unfortunately also filtered out all of the good things his body needed. Once discharged from NICU, he went home with a central line in his chest. Through this central line, we infused albumin and Lasix to keep the body from getting fluid overloaded. He did this every day, over 8-10 hours, for two and a half years.
At two and a half, we decided to go ahead with a form of dialysis he could have at home overnight, to try to give him a chance at a more normal life. Unfortunately, due to complications, that almost took our precious boy from us. We then had to switch to a more complicated form of dialysis, that required us to travel over an hour to a children’s hospital 3 days a week where he would do his dialysis treatment over 4-6 hours. The results of that did not turn out the way we had hoped, so in November of last year we made the decision to remove his kidneys. Which then required us to travel five days a week for the 4-6 hour treatment.
In the beginning of this year we started his workup/complicated checklist to get him actively listed for a kidney. Luckily, things went smoothly and Grady was listed at the end of May of this year. On August 16th, while at our three oldest children’s school’s open house, we got the call, the call that changed our lives forever. Grady received his new chance for a better life on August 17th, 2023. He received a kidney.
