AUBURN – For a week, Kelsi-Rae Moreshead was free from tubes, dialysis machines and a restrictive diet. She had a new kidney and a new chance at life.
But today the 14-year-old returns to the hospital.
The disease that killed her old kidneys is now ravaging her new one.
“This has really kind of blindsided everybody,” said Karen Smith, Kelsi-Rae’s mother. “It’s devastating.”
Kelsi-Rae, a thin girl with a passion for punk rock, horror movies and the color pink, has dealt with progressive kidney disease since she was 6. For years, she had to take dozens of pills and stick to a diet that banned sodium, potassium and many liquids. She endured daily dialysis to sweep her bloodstream clear of the toxins.
Doctors gave her only one hope: a kidney transplant.
But she matched no one and for 18 months hovered near the top of the transplant list. After a near-fatal infection in February, doctors warned that her body probably couldn’t handle another medical crisis.
Then, in the wee hours of a humid, mid-July night, the phone rang. A local child had died. He – or she – was a match for Kelsi-Rae.
Kelsi-Rae didn’t want the transplant at first. As hard as it was, she’d known only one life for eight years. Dialysis didn’t hurt, she said. She knew a transplant operation would.
She relented as her family rushed to get dressed and leave for the hospital. Still in her pajamas, she shook as she called her friends from the car.
Her surgery lasted three and a half hours. Doctors told the family it would be a day or two before the kidney could filter blood and produce urine.
It took only three hours.
Kelsi-Rae pushed herself to get up just a day after surgery. Her blood work was good. She went home.
Kelsi-Rae, her family and the doctors knew her body could reject the kidney or her disease could attack the new organ. Still, they held out hope.
Her ordeal, which was featured in the Sun Journal on Sunday, July 24, seemed to be over.
“There were so many positive things,” her mother said.
But over the weekend, her blood pressure shot up. Doctors found a large amount of protein in her urine.
The disease was back.
Kelsi-Rae will return to the hospital today for another surgery. Doctors will insert catheters, then filter her blood every day to rid her body of the toxins it’s producing to attack the new kidney. She will be in the hospital at least seven days. After that, she’ll trek to a Scarborough clinic three times a week for a procedure similar to dialysis.
The treatment is in an attempt to send the disease into remission, according to Smith.
The procedure is experimental. Her mother gives it a 50/50 chance.
Again, they hope.
“If she’d gotten the transplant two years ago, or even a year ago, they wouldn’t have had this (procedure),” her mother said. “Maybe this’ll work.”
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