A Father's Day gift to a son; This teen needs a kidney. His stepdad has offered

A Father's Day gift to a son; This teen needs a kidney. His stepdad has offered one of his

Lisa Jemison
Local News - Saturday, June 16, 2007 @ 00:00

"To start off, my father is the most amazing man in the world." So begins a letter Ricky Brant, 16, wrote to recognize Scott Geoffrey in honour of Father's Day.

Geoffrey is there to throw a football around, to help with homework and to barbecue dinner, Ricky wrote.

And in July, Geoffrey will go with Ricky to Ottawa to give him a kidney. A pretty grand gesture, considering that Geoffrey has only been Ricky's stepfather for six years.

When he was four, Ricky was diagnosed with familial membranous glomerulonephritis, a rare genetic disorder that causes inflammation of the tiny filters in the kidney that clean the blood.

Three times a week, for four hours a day, Ricky has to go to the hospital for dialysis to remove waste products and excess fluid from his blood.

According to Health Canada, a kidney transplant costs about $20,000, plus $6,000 per year afterwards. Dialysis is more costly, at about $50,000 per year.

Ricky received a kidney transplant in August 2000, but learned shortly after that it was unsuccessful. About six months ago, they began looking into a second transplant.

After blood tests showed that Ricky's mother, Rebecca Geoffrey, wasn't a suitable candidate to give her son a kidney, Scott Geoffrey underwent several blood tests to find out if his blood type was compatible with Ricky's. The results came back positive.

"When I found out I couldn't, there wasn't even a question that he'd be tested. A lot of people would have had to be asked," Rebecca Geoffrey said of her husband.

"You know a lot of stepdads who are there, but not there like that." The Kidney Foundation of Canada reported that of 1,030 kidney transplants performed in 2005, 43 per cent were from living donors. While the kidney transplant is a very obvious show of love, Ricky and his mother agree that a stepfather's actions on a day-to-day scale speak just as clearly.

"A lot of the time if it's just me and him in the house, me and Pops here, we'll just play video games," Ricky said, adding that they have a great team strategy for games like Halo.

"[Ricky and his older brother, Pat] get to hear life lessons from their dad, whether they want to or not," Rebecca Geoffrey added.

"It's those kind of little things that make a difference," she said, but the kidney donation is a "real tell" of his devotion.

Scott Geoffrey said he doesn't consider his actions out of the ordinary.

"I don't think about it," he said. "They're my sons."

"A lot of kids, if they were in my situation, their dad would donate their kidney to them, I would hope, but for me, it's pretty much the same because he's my dad and I d on't see him any other way," Ricky said.

ljemison@thewhig.com

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