So . . . what’s next for Ferris Backmeyer, the four-year-old from Kamloops who on Saturday underwent a kidney transplant that had to be reversed later that night.
First things first . . .
There is a GoFundMe page for the Backmeyers right here.
Ferris’s mother, Lindsey, is a registered respiratory therapist at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. Ferris’s father, Patrick, attends Thompson Rivers U in Kamloops as he works towards become a registered nurse. Ferris also has two sisters — Tavia, 9, and Ksenia, 7. While Patrick has been doing some commuting while going to school, Lindsey and the three girls, along with Lindsey’s mother, Leslie, have been living in Vancouver since the last week of December. And they now are looking at being there for a while yet.
Any funds raised through this GoFundMe page will go directly to living expenses, allowing them to keep their home in Kamloops and to remain in the rental unit they have in Vancouver.
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Meanwhile, Ferris was back in surgery on Monday at B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver as a hemo-dialysis line was put in place.
To go back a bit, Ferris had been doing peritoneal dialysis (PD) at home before this latest chapter began. But she was having some issues with it, so was to travel to Vancouver in late December to be transitioned to hemo-dialysis. Before leaving for Vancouver, they got a call telling them that a kidney had become available for transplant.
The family headed to Vancouver, only to have the surgery cancelled at the last minute. Still, Ferris made the move to hemo-dialysis and then recently was being transitioned back to PD in order to allow a return home. The gang was coming back to Kamloops last weekend, but got another call on Friday just before the move was to start. Yes, a kidney was available and surgery was scheduled for Saturday.
The surgery took place, but there were immediate complications and the kidney had to be removed.
So now it’s a matter of getting Ferris back to where she had been so that, in time, she might undergo another transplant.
That brings us to Monday . . .
As Ferris was having the line put in, Lindsey noted that her youngest daughter “will have CRRT (continuous dialysis) for the next 24-48 hours to try and get a head start on some fluid removal.”
That is to lead to daily hemo starting Wednesday, with a plan to start spreading it out as soon as possible.
Of course, Ferris remained intubated as of Monday night, something that hopefully will come to an end sometime Tuesday.
With the amount of time, Ferris and Lindsey have spent at B.C. Children’s Hospital, they really have become familiar faces.
“We have seen so many of our hospital family (super sad reality, I know),” Lindsey wrote on Monday. “Her dialysis team all have come to see us and they look as rough as I do! They cried with us. One of our favourite ward nurses brought us lunch.
“These are nurses and doctors who have cared for her since she was weeks old. We feel loved by them and feel like they genuinely care about Ferris and our whole family. It’s so incredibly nice to see familiar faces in an ICU where I know no one.”
On Sunday, Lindsey had provided some insight into what had happened after the transplant surgery.
“Urology basically said the donor kidney was perfect but it was challenging to anastamose to Ferris because of the size of her vessels. He basically said he wouldn’t consider another transplant again until she’s bigger, which terrifies me because she isn’t growing well on dialysis at all.
“He worried they underestimated her heart health and it might not have been strong enough to perfuse the organ. This is big scary stuff.”
The Backmeyers didn’t get the OK to search for a living donor until about a year ago because the medical team didn’t feel that Ferris was big enough to undergo a transplant. The growth process has been slow for her, but she finally got to a point where they put her name on the transplant list.
“I am at this point going to canvass like hell for living donors . . . I think it’s Ferris’s best shot,” Lindsey said. “I felt like there was no way people could make it through the process before she got an offer of a deceased kidney but now know we have time . . . as long as Ferris gives us that time.”
TAKING NOTE 