Xavier, 3, brightens party for transplant patients

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Xavier, 3, brightens party for transplant patients

By Angela Lau
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

December 10, 2007

SAN DIEGO – Last year at this time, 3-year-old Xavier McLeod was begging Santa for a new kidney.

This year, he is sassing him.

At Rady Children's Hospital's Sixth Annual Holiday Celebration for kidney and liver transplant patients yesterday, Xavier outshone 35 other organ recipients with a red T-shirt that said in bold white letters: “Dear Santa, Define Good.”

He can afford to be cheeky because he's not asking for an organ any more. In August, the boy got a new kidney from a child who had died.

Now he's moved on to other things on his Santa's list. Spiderman, for instance, he said.

Yesterday, though, Xavier was too busy running around and playing drums with the entertainers to talk about his life after transplant.

He swayed to the percussion beat and made a gingerbread man ignoring the mountains of pizza piled up at the reception table in the brightly decorated meeting room at the hospital, located in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego.

Xavier was one of the lucky ones who can enjoy his childhood. Fifteen to 20 children are on the hospital's waiting list for donor kidneys and livers, said Dr. Ajai Khanna, the hospital's director of pediatric abdominal transplantation. Some, such as partygoer Diana Herrera, 10, will get a new kidney from their parents. Others have no family members who can donate, and they are waiting.

As for Xavier, he refused to be slowed by a tube he still wears that feeds food and water into his stomach in case he doesn't eat and drink enough. He has a second tube near his bladder to release urine because his bladder cannot expand and contract well enough. Underneath his little jeans is a diaper that he is embarrassed to show to strangers.

“Last year, we saw all the kids who had transplants, and we were just praying Xavier would get one,” said his mother, Valerie James, 36, of Lemon Grove. “This year, we are celebrating with them.”

Xavier was born with defective kidney valves, which prevented him from urinating. The waste in his body accumulated, destroying his appetite and threatening his life.

While he waited for a transplant, which needed to come from another African-American in order to be a close enough genetic match, he underwent more than 14 surgeries to insert tubes and catheters that fed him and kept his body going, his mother said.

Then, after his first few painful years, he got his transplant.

“He is eating more,” his mother said. “He's running all over the place.”

But the most exciting part of Xavier's recovery is going to be Christmas. In past years, he had to wait to finish his nightly 10-hour home dialysis before the family could open their Christmas presents.

Not this year. Xavier no longer needs dialysis, just his anti-rejection medications and regular checkups.

In another corner of the hospital's courtyard, Mazzy Noriega was more subdued about her recovery. She is shy, but her father, George, said Mazzy was in dire straits when her liver rapidly deteriorated in 2003. Two weeks after her diagnosis of liver failure, he gave her a lobe of his liver. Mazzy was 20 months old then. She is now 6 years old.

“They cannot enjoy life. They cannot play with their peers. It's a real stress on the parents,” Khanna said. “Once these kids get new organs, they bounce back to life. They can go to school. They can compete with their peers. They can grow.”

Few children were able to articulate the relief of being renewed as well as sisters Carlie and Mikaela Partaine, 10 and 13, of Poway.

Both had kidney transplants because of genetic diseases. Mikaela received hers at Rady Children's Hospital in 2000 from someone who had died and Carlie got hers from her father in 2001 at a Stanford University hospital in Palo Alto.

“We're free,” Mikaela said. “We can enjoy life without suffering through dialysis. We're rocking the house.”

Carlie chimed in: “And we are rocking this place!”

Angela Lau: (760) 476-8240; angela.lau@uniontrib.com

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