Woman donating kidney to 12-year-old girl

Woman donating kidney to 12-year-old girl

By Mary Beth Smetzer
Published May 23, 2007

By mid-evening every night, 12-year-old Brandie Williams and her mother thoroughly wash their hands and don surgical masks.

The sterile preparations are a daily bedtime ritual before Brandie is attached, via a surgically implanted abdominal catheter, to an automated peritoneal dialysis machine that cleans her blood while she sleeps. It’s been this way ever since she was 10 years old, when she was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a disease that leads to kidney failure.

The dialysis allows Brandie to lead a normal daytime schedule and attend school regularly. But it precludes things such as sleepovers, those all night gab sessions that girls Brandie’s age look forward to on the weekends.

But that will soon change. Brandie has been matched with a kidney donor.

“I am so excited that I can go to a sleepover,” Brandie said in anticipation of her new life ahead, made possible by the donor, 35-year-old Lalena Leigh, who is a co-worker of Brandie’s mother at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.

The transplant will take place in Seattle and will require a two-month recovery period during which Brandie will be monitored until she is fully healed.

Medical issues aren’t new to the poised young girl nor to her mother, Gina, who is her primary caregiver. Gina proudly states that Brandie has never had an infection during the two years of dialysis treatment administered at home.

“I’m very careful with taking care of her,” Gina said.

Brandie’s confident attitude about her daily dialysis is gained from her mother.

“I’m glad to do peritoneal rather than hemodialysis,” Brandie states. She quite understands the latter would mean being connected to a special machine at the local dialysis center for four hours, three times a week.

Brandie admits to no apprehensions about the upcoming surgery, also a reflection of her mother’s positive attitude.

“You can’t be all frazzled. You can’t fall apart,” Gina said.. “If you do, then they see that, and they think if my mom is scared, maybe I should be scared.”

Praying for health

Every night after supper the week before Mother’s Day, Brandie and her 7-year-old brother, Bryan, joined in practicing a praise dance with a dozen other “anointed angels,” ages 5 to 12, for the Mother’s Day service at St. John’s Baptist Church.

Small of stature, with noticeably less energy than the other children restlessly learning their lines and hand motions one night, Brandie nevertheless was alert and involved. She quietly eased Bryan and the little girl in front of her into position, avoiding their flailing arms as they try to imitate the praise hymn motions to the music.

Afterward, the entire group of “angels” circled together in the main aisle, holding hands for a final prayer.

“Please help us do a good job on the praise dance,” a young girl prayed. “Teach us how to be nicer and kinder to each other,” she added, ending with “Thank you God for everything you do for us.”

The small, tight-knit Williams family enjoys its larger church family at St. John’s Baptist. The church is an important part of their lives and has been since before Bryan was born.

Gina is a prayerful woman who firmly believes that everything that has led up to the impending kidney transplant surgery, beginning with finding Lalena as a matching kidney donor who has total family support and works at the hospital, is God’s doing.

“I don’t believe it is luck,” Gina states emphatically. “I don’t believe that at all. I talked to God. I had a conversation with God that I wanted Brandie to have a normal life and be a healthy teenager. I asked him to do that with Brandie.”

“It is unfortunate people don’t give credit where credit is due.”

Brandie was born on Oct. 16, 1994–two months early, weighing just 1 pound 9 ounces and measuring only 14 inches in length. She was hospitalized for a little over three months before she could be brought home.

“I could hold her in one hand,” Gina recalled as she leafed through Brandie’s baby book one recent evening.

Brandie’s health has been tenuous for a long time. She developed asthma at 18 months and has been in and out of the hospital for treatment, with several bouts landing her in the intensive care unit. Today the asthma is kept under control with a steroid inhaler.

“Brandie has been through so much, it makes her a different kid,” Gina said.

Lots of help

Friday, during sixth-grade graduation ceremonies at Hunter Elementary School, Brandie’s classmates and teachers presented her with a shopping bag stuffed with bundles of goodies — personal letters, a soft quilt for her hospital stay and an iPod Shuffle so she can listen to tunes during her recovery.

After she accepted the gifts, Brandie headed straight into the audience and gave her teary-eyed mom a big hug before returning to her seat with her graduating class.

Lalena Leigh, Brandie’s kidney donor, also attended.

The giving of gifts was the latest in what has been a continual community response to Brandie’s illness. Brandie’s insurance, Banner Health Plans, and Medicaid are paying for the surgery, but private donations are paying the other expenses such as lodging, food, airfare for Leigh’s family and Leigh’s lost wages as she recovers for six to eight weeks.

At one of the recent fundraisers — there have been several — put on by family friends and Gina’s co-workers over the past year, an unflappable Brandie cheerfully greeted all comers to a Chili Feed in the lobby of Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.

Gina has worked as a nurses’ assistant and ward clerk on the hospital’s Two South for the past five years, and her workmates have been supporting Brandie every step of the way.

“We’ve had help from the start,” Gina said.

Two years ago, nurse Pam Sullivan built a large two-shelf bedside module with a laminate top to support the dialysis equipment in Brandie’s bedroom.

Julie Way, patient coordinator on Two South, organized the chili feed and an earlier bake sale to help the Williamses during their stay in Seattle and make up for lost wages during Brandie’s recovery. A dog wash was held May 11-12 where volunteers, including Gina and Bryan, washed and groomed 54 dogs. Brandie is highly allergic to dogs and had to content herself with playing with her Nintendo game at a friend’s home.

Way said the staff is eager to see Brandie revitalized with the organ replacement.

“Brandie deserves a chance to have a happy, healthy, normal life.”

Contact staff writer Mary Beth Smetzer at 459-7546 or msmetzer@newsminer.com.

This article may be accessed online at http://newsminer.com/2007/05/23/7143.