All signs are pointing to this being a big week for the Backmeyer family of Kamloops, what with Ferris, 6, in line to get a new kidney at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
The Backmeyers have been in Toronto for a couple of weeks now and it seems that things have gone well to this point. So sometime over the next few days Ferris just might get a kidney from a living donor via the paired exchange program.
What follows is the story of people involved in this chapter of Ferris’s life and what they have gone through and continue to experience as the transplantation process moves along.
On Sunday, Lindsey, Ferris’ mother, introduced the world to Leah Scott and, in the process, provided a great look at the process.
“If you don’t already know,” Lindsey wrote on Facebook, “this beautiful human is Ferris’s paired exchange donor. Leah Scott has been working toward this now for 2.5 years!!!!
“I met Leah at work. She worked in emerg (at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops) and I made friends with one of her besties. Friendly acquaintances at best. However, she heard about Ferris and Leah’s remarkable ability to put herself into another’s shoes led her to where we are today. She has felt a calling and has fought really hard to get where she is today. All while living her life, raising her kids, working her business!!
“Donating a kidney in Canada isn’t an easy process. Aside from the fact that she’s going to give Ferris her second chance, she’s become one of my biggest cheerleaders and offers support like none other.
“I sit here (Sunday night), knowing that this is all happening sooooon. We aren’t allowed to talk about dates, times and locations but we are in Toronto (everyone knows that already) and by the end of this week my girl should be on the other side.
“Leah has started her journey. She’s left her kids with family and is with her husband awaiting her surgery which is soon.”
When it happens, it will be the second transplant that Ferris will have undergone. The first one, from a deceased donor, took place on the afternoon of March 6, 2021, at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. However, there were complications and the kidney was removed later that night.
Between then and now, there were lots of twists and turns, including one that involved another person who was found to be a match for Ferris. With all that’s happening now, Lindsey couldn’t help but think of her.
“I think about how we even got here (in Toronto) and it really wouldn’t be without Ferris’s original donor,” Lindsey wrote. “The one who brought us to Toronto in the first place. She’s a nurse who works at (B.C. Children’s Hospital) and Canuck Place. She heard about Ferris in one of her nursing groups at the time of her failed transplant.
“I won’t disclose her name as she remained mostly anonymous throughout the whole process. We did connect just a week before I learned about the second kidney via paired exchange. She’s lovely. Has a big beautiful family. She didn’t want me to feel like I owed her anything and also wanted to be sure it was ‘on’ before reaching out.
“She was a good match for Ferris but BCCH surgeons didn’t feel comfortable doing the surgery. Knowing how challenging it is to find a good match she asked if they would get a second surgical opinion. She just wanted the best for Ferris and I can’t help but love her for that.
“A perfect stranger . . . that’s what got us access to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be HERE!”
And now the Backmeyers are ready, as is Leah Scott.
“Leah, we love you!! You’re so special and will always be loved by our family,” Lindsey wrote. “I hope everything goes so smoothly for you. I’ll be thinking of you tons as you prepare for this. It’s friggin huge. We are finally here. Huge hugs!!!”
As for Leah, she also took to Facebook, writing that “2.5 years ago, God laid it on my heart to donate (a) kidney to a child of a friendly work acquaintance. I started the process to get tested knowing deep in my spirit that I would be part of her story. During my testing, she got a deceased donor kidney and I wondered if I heard wrong. But that kidney was unsuccessful. So I kept going until they told me I was a match! But then they told me they didn’t want my kidney because it was too big and I could get out of the donation program. I said I would stay. Because I knew that God had other plans . . .
“A couple of months after, they told me that they didn’t need me anymore and they weren’t pursuing paired exchange at this time. We found out Ferris was highly sensitized, meaning it would be close to impossible to find her a new kidney. So I reached out to ask to be retested and we were no longer a match.
“But . . . they were willing to try the paired exchange program if I was willing to be paired with her, meaning if a kidney came up for her, she would get that one and I would give mine to a stranger.
“I said, ‘Yes.’ That was 1.5 years ago.
“While we waited on the paired exchange list, another living donor came up. She was slated for transplantation in April. I had no idea why God had called me to this but it seemed like it wasn’t going to be me to be part of her journey after all.
“Every week our paths crossed at piano lessons for this past year. Every week, I prayed that I would see what God had for me next. Maybe someone else would need a kidney and I was ready.
“Then on Feb. 3, 2023, I got a call from the donor program. They had a better kidney (that is her miraculous just-right match) in the program if I was willing to donate.”
That brings us to this week. The Backmeyers are in Toronto. Leah Scott will be in a hospital somewhere in Canada; the location is known only to a few because of privacy concerns. But the preliminary testing is over and there doesn’t appear to be anything but green lights.
So let’s keep these folks in our thoughts and prayers as the clock ticks.
TAKING NOTE 