From Deseret News archives:
Kidney transplant goes swimmingly
8-year-old is immersing herself in new experiences
Friday, the little girl and pals Audrey and Bethany Ahlers went swimming something that Kalee was not allowed to do for so long because she was on dialysis and couldn't immerse the port through which her blood was filtered. As the Whittier Elementary third-grader splashed and sloshed and floated in the water, her smile said good times seem finally to have arrived.
Her journey has been one of almost unspeakable heartbreak and joy.
When Kalee was born, she had only one kidney and it was malformed, never working right. When she was 18 months old, her grandpa gave her one of his kidneys. And for a while, things seemed to be all right, though she was always too small, too fragile. Then her body rejected that kidney and she went back on dialysis, three days a week, four hours a day. It made it hard for a little girl to spend much time in school, which she dearly loved. And it made her a little different from her friends, which she didn't love.
But Kalee's a sociable creature, a fighter, a stoic. She brought all those traits to bear.
That early transplant, which had saved Kalee then, made getting a new working kidney harder. She built up antibodies it always happens with a transplant and that makes any subsequent kidney match much more difficult. That's one reason that on two different occasions they got the call that a kidney seemed to be available, a transplant imminent, followed by a call saying "never mind," says Pam Grant, a social worker at the kidney transplant and dialysis center at the U., which also has the region's only pediatric kidney dialysis program.
Kalee would show up for her dialysis and play with her "kidney friends" and watch and smile as, one by one, they got transplants and left dialysis and she stayed behind, Grant says. It must have seemed like she'd never get a turn.
Recent comments
your story made me cry
kalee | Oct. 19, 2007 at 7:42 p.m.
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