Aidan's Kidney Transplant

On June 13, 2011, my husband and I received the most devastating news we could have imagined. As we walked into the high risk doctor's office, we expected that our previous test results were a false positive. That our son would be ok. What we heard that day left us hopeless, numb.

As I laid on that table, we watched our first child happily squirm on the screen. As he finished, the doctor told us that Aidan was going to have severe kidney damage, most likely incompatible with life. Our options at that time were abortion, or probable stillborn delivery. Devastating. Aborting our child was never an option for us. And so started the long battle to save Aidan's life.

He was born early at 35 weeks and 4 days, without any complication. He was immediately transferred to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. where urologists, nephrologists, and cardiologists evaluated him. He was diagnosed with Prune Belly Syndrome. Prune belly is characterized by a lack of abdominal wall musculature, undescended testes, an urinary system abnormalities.

Since birth, Aidan has had 4 surgeries: open hip reduction, two stage orchiopexy, and a urinary system reconstruction with a nephrectomy and mitrofanoff placement. In a nutshell, we fixed his hips and testes, and then created a urinary system that will allow him to empty his bladder through catheterization and it prepared him for a kidney transplant.

Ryan and I have just started down the road to transplant. Both of us willing to be living donors, we are preparing to start testing at Georgetown in the next few weeks to see if one of us is a match for Aidan. We are asking that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers in the coming months. Our fight for Aidan will be lifelong. But, Aidan's life has been such a blessing to us and we look forward to many more memories!