It was a Happy Canada Day for the Backmeyer family of Kamloops as Lindsey reported via Facebook on Wednesday that Ferris, her three-year-old daughter, has “definitely turned a corner!”
Ferris is in need of a kidney transplant and is on the list, but the process stalled after she developed fungal peritonitis last week. As a result, her parents, Lindsey and Pat, had to take her to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. Patients with kidney disease who are doing peritoneal dialysis (PD) fear peritonitis. In this instance, Ferris had to have her catheter removed and has been transitioned to hemodialysis — she began with a three-hour run on Monday. She had been doing PD at home since she was 14 months old.
On Wednesday, Lindsey reported that Ferris’s “pain is less and we haven’t needed morphine since Monday afternoon but are still reliant on regular Tylenol. She slept 12 hours straight (Tuesday) night and I got a solid nine hours . . . it was so so good!”
Ferris’s oxygen levels also have gotten better so she no longer is wearing a monitor.
For now, as Ferris continues the transition to hemo, she is on a diet that restricts fluid and food intake.
“It’s soooo weird for her to be constantly asking for food and actually eating food,” Lindsey wrote. “If anything it confirms my belief that she will go back to being an oral eater once she gets a kidney transplant.”
Lindsey also said they could be looking at “a long time” in Vancouver. In fact, she said, “It could be until transplant.”
Eventually, doctors will try to get Ferris back on PD, but in order for that to happen another catheter will have to be put in place. When might that happen? Lindsey said she was told “three weeks . . . by nephrology; however, urology said three months.”
She added: “We’ve also been told that there is only a 50% success rate of peritoneal dialysis after having a fungal peritonitis. I’m trying not to get too stressed about what that means for our family.”
For now, Lindsey and Pat are staying in Kitsilano, but will move to Ronald McDonald House in about four weeks. Ferris’s older sisters, Ksenia and Tavia, who remained in Kamloops, are expected to visit in the near future.
In the meantime, Ferris spent Monday “eating all the food, colouring and playing Play-Doh!”
And it will bring a smile to your face to hear that “she’s winning the hearts of all the nurses, which of course doesn’t surprise me one little bit!”
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If you are interested in being a living kidney donor, more information is available here:
Living Kidney Donor Program
St. Paul’s Hospital
6A Providence Building
1081 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z 1Y6
Tel: 604-806-9027
Toll free: 1-877-922-9822
Fax: 604-806-9873
Email: donornurse@providencehealth.bc.ca
It’s official! Nova Scotia will be turning to a system of presumed consent for organ and tissue donation as of Jan. 18. The legislature passed the law in April 2019, and when it takes effect Nova Scotia will be the first province in Canada to go that route. . . . What it means is that if a person is going to have to take steps to opt out if he/she doesn’t want to be an organ donor. . . . “I fully expect that we’re going to have the best donation rates in the country in a few years. That’s my objective,” Dr. Stephen Beed, the medical director of the province’s organ and tissue donation program, told Michael Gorman of CBC News. “I want to be able to provide the best opportunity we can for Nova Scotians by having the best program in the country, and that’s where I want us to be. Now we have the support to do it.” . . . Gorman’s story is right here.
TAKING NOTE 