Christmas wish: 6 year old wants kidney for his mom

[okarol]

Christmas wish: 6 year old wants kidney for his mom

BY KATHIE DICKERSON • Staff Writer • December 12, 2010

Like many other letters to Santa, 6-year-old Jesse Hunt has written the man with the white beard and red suit and asked for a race track, train and a real computer. His most recent letter takes a heart-wrenching twist, though.

"I need a kidney for my mommy -- so she is not so sick all the time," Jesse tells Santa in the letter.

Relatives said Jesse thinks about Santa Claus no matter what the season, and Grandma Kathy Norris said it was July when he asked her to put the missive in the mail.

"He said, 'Santa will help my mom get better; I gotta write him,'" Burris said. "He doesn't want his mommy to go live with Jesus."

Jesse's mother, Sherie Hunt has had failing kidneys for three years, brought on by Type 1 diabetes first diagnosed when she was 23. The 47-year-old now undergoes dialysis three times a week.

She recently visited The Ohio State University Medical Center and was place on the transplant list. Doctors tell her she'll need both a kidney and a pancreas.

Husband Mike would be a good match for the kidney, but he suffers from osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, and doctors fear the medicine he takes could cause a kidney issue for him, too.

"You don't want to sacrifice one parent to save the other," Burris said. "You're caught in a Catch-22."

Hunt has been really sick since Jesse was 4 years old, and he's learned when she's in bed she can't do things such as read a story or rub his back.

"He's a child living in an adult world," Hunt said. "He can't be involved in soccer, or Boy Scouts, or any of those things because of my dialysis and I have so many doctor appointments."

But her mother thinks Jesse is the reason Hunt keeps going.

"When you have a little 6-year-old you have to hope, and if it wasn't for him I don't think she would have made it this far," Burris said.

The other thing that keeps Hunt going are her dialysis treatments. Kidneys filter blood, separating waste from particles that are returned to circulating blood.

"Dialysis is a life-sustaining treatment that removes toxins and regulates the body's fluids," said Joe Carlucci, chief executive officer and founder of American Renal Associates.

Hunt undergoes dialysis three times a week at one of American Renal Associates' locations -- the Kidney Care Center of Zanesville.

Many of the patients in dialysis are on transplant lists, and it's something that's encouraged, Carlucci said.

"It's a wonderful gift to receive a transplant," he said.

However, others have undergone dialysis for many years. Carlucci has been involved with dialysis for 33 years, and improvements in medications and equipment have made treatment much easier for patients than it was 30 years ago, he said.

But Hunt's health is wavering, leaving her too tired to eat much at Thanksgiving dinner or commit to a family outing to Oglebay Park. Then, earlier this month, she found herself in the hospital, where doctors had to remove three of the toes on her right food. Hunt suffers from Charcot foot, a progressive degenerative condition that affects the joints in the feet. The condition is caused by several diseases, but primarily by diabetes.

Jesse came late in Hunt's life, after she was told for many years that she couldn't have children. He spent several of the first weeks of his life in an incubator, as the doctors took him at 25 weeks gestation because they feared for the lives of both him and his mother.

She knew diabetes would make the pregnancy a risk but decided she wanted to keep the child that wasn't supposed to be.

"I'll take what God gives me," she said.

Now Jesse's trying to pay her back and asks that Santa help make her healthy.

His letter asks Santa for snow boots so that when Sherie gets her new kidney, they can play in the snow. Dad already got him the boots, so now Jesse thinks he wants a new sled, one that will hold two people.

"I also want a toy motorcycle, desks for the family and, ah, Mommy to get well," Jesse said.

kdickers@coshoctontribune.com; (740) 295-3442

http://www.coshoctontribune.com/article/20101225/UPDATES01/101224012/-6-year-old-s-letter-to-Santa-gets-responses-from-community