'Angel' donates kidney to 7-year-old Crooksville girl

'Angel' donates kidney to 7-year-old Crooksville girl

BY LORI LAW • Correspondent • June 30, 2010

CROOKSVILLE -- What feisty, strawberry blonde Darby Bolyard is looking forward to the most after her kidney transplant is what one would expect a 7-year-old to say.

"Eating cheese again, chocolate and going swimming!" she said, bouncing on her mother Jacqueline Bolyard's lap recently.

Jacqueline's answer to the same question was unexpected.

"I want to be able to wash the handprints off from my walls. Am I going to be allowed to do that, Darby?" she asked.

"After, Mommy, after," Darby said, grinning.

The handprints, Jacqueline explained, began showing up when Darby first was anticipating her transplant.

"The first one was by the door and I thought she had just been standing there and put her hand on the wall while she was looking out of the door. I didn't think much about it, but then I started finding them other places in the house. I found them in odd spots, like between the nightstand and the bed down close to the floor," Jacqueline said. "She finally told me that she had gone through and that every room in the house had at least one handprint. She told us that she didn't want us to forget her. She wanted us to remember her so she was putting her handprints everywhere."

Jacqueline hasn't washed the prints off, but she is a step closer to it as Darby underwent her transplant on Tuesday and reports from the family and the donor's family are that both patients are doing well.

It was made possible by the woman Jacqueline calls "our angel," -- donor Lori Gaitten.

Gaitten had not met Darby when she became aware that the Bolyard family was in need of a kidney donor. Jacqueline, the principal at Crooksville High School, had met Gaitten a few times as Gaitten coordinated blood drives for the American Red Cross.

"I only knew her on a professional capacity. She was in my building working closely with another teacher to organize blood drives so I would see her about three times a year," Jacqueline said. "We have known since Darby was 5 weeks old that a transplant would be inevitable. We had always assumed that it would be one of us, my husband or myself that would donate to her. We never had any doubt."

Eventually, the Bolyards learned neither of them was a candidate to be a donor for Darby.

"That was the one of the hardest things. If your kids need something, as a parent, you give it to them. We couldn't," she said. "We were lost trying to figure out what to do, how do we do this? People always say that if there's anything you need, let me know. Well, how do you call someone and say that what we really need is a kidney and can we have one? It was overwhelming."

The idea of putting donor papers out at an upcoming blood drive came to Jacqueline out of the blue, she said,

"When I called Lori and explained to her what we needed, I had to leave it as a message."

Gaitten laughed remembering, "It was a voicemail!"

Jacqueline said Gaitten called her back at work and the two talked about organizing the drive and the logistics of making available the donor paperwork.

"One of the last things she told me was," Jacqueline said tearfully, recalling the conversation, "I don't know how many people to sign you'll get, she said, but you have one. I'm O-positive. I'll do it."

Jacqueline said that she hadn't known what to say to Lori Gaitten or what to think but was overwhelmed at her offer.

That blood drive, Gaitten said, was the largest ever in Perry County, and an unprecedented number of people completed donor paperwork for Darby.

Even with that army of support, it was Gaitten that discovered she was a match for Darby.

"It was an immediate decision. I couldn't imagine being in a more awful situation than knowing that your child needed help and that you couldn't and had to just hope that someone would help," Gaitten said. "I was the first one to fill out the paperwork and knew before anybody else, before the blood drive even had happened. I found out on New Year's Eve 2008 and when I got that call, I cried. They were tears of happiness. I knew from the moment that I said I'd be tested that I'd be the one. It was supposed to be. I felt all along that I'd be the one."

Gaitten said she always had checked the organ donation box on her driver's license and has seen others change their option as a result of her willingness to be a living donor for Darby.

Although the transplant surgery initially was scheduled for the summer of 2009, Darby's condition had stabilized for a time and the time frame for the surgery was pushed back. With another year of medical ups and downs, a shift to Cincinnati Children's Hospital was made.

Gaitten has been getting to know Darby, bringing her cheerleading pompoms. Darby agreed with her mother that Gaitten is her angel. Jacqueline said Gaitten always will be a part of the Bolyard family. The two families came together and had pizza to get to know each other a little better.

Gaitten and Bolyard said their employers have been supportive while they have arranged their work responsibilities and schedules and that the family, community, school and church support that Team Darby has received has been wonderful.

After the surgery, Gaitten will be able to be released from the hospital after only a few days with a six-week recovery planned at home. Darby will remain in the hospital for up to two weeks, but she should be ready to join her second grade class in the fall.

Darby hopes her two front teeth will have come in by the time school starts and that she will have gotten to see the movie "Despicable Me."

"We'll be connected forever," Jacqueline said. "Lori's very much a part of the family. There is a tie there between us that will always be there."

"I want to see pictures when Darby goes to prom. When she graduates, I hope I'll be invited," Gaitten said. "It's not something that you do and just walk away from."

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