Those people following the Backmeyer family’s journey through daughter Ferris’s second kidney transplant were greeted by seven glorious words on Friday morning.
“There is a big bag of pee.”
That was part of a brief update from Lindsey Backmeyer, Ferris’s mother, after her six-year-old daughter had undergone a kidney transplant during the night at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
The Backmeyers are from Kamloops.
“She’s been out for a few hours now. She’s stable,” Lindsey wrote on Facebook. “There is a big bag of pee. The doctors are all very happy with how she’s doing. Her surgeon told me it was a beautiful kidney and it woke up right away!”
All of that is awesome news. The fact that the new kidney quickly sprung into action and began producing urine is as good as things get at this stage.
“Her creatinine was already down to 120s,” Lindsey continued. “She’s breathing kinda fast and looking pretty puffy, but is managing okay at the moment.
“They are only replacing what comes out now. Let today be smooth and not scary!!”
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To date, this has been a year of high stress for the Backmeyers, who had to relocate to Vancouver early on as Ferris encountered some infection issues that resulted in her having to be transitioned from peritoneal dialysis to hemodialysis. BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver is the only place in the province where children are able to receive hemo.
At the same time, the family was prepping for an April 25 transplant date in Toronto. However, that date was cancelled a week before as there was a break in the chain.
Ferris’s second transplant was done via the paired exchange program. While there was a break in the chain in April that wasn’t the case on Thursday.
The paired exchange program works like this: A donor, in this case Leah Scott of Kamloops, agrees to donate a kidney to a stranger, but only if the person she is acting on behalf of, in this case Ferris, gets one. What it amounts to is that Ferris and Leah weren’t matches, but when a match was found for Ferris, Leah offered to stay in the chain and see the process through to its end.
Due to privacy concerns, we aren’t privy to how many people are in a chain, but it could be four, six, eight . . . so you know that the logistics are something to behold.
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Lindsey wrote that the family — father Pat and older daughters Ksenia and
Tavia also are in Toronto — enjoyed Thursday before Ferris went into surgery that night.
“Mostly perfect day today,” Lindsey wrote. “(Ferris) would have said today was a great day although I’m not so sure what she’s gonna think of us all when she wakes up. She hopefully had her last hemo run.”
With all the testing behind her, Ferris was able to spend time with her family.
“She had zero tests so we took her for a walk to the park in the afternoon,” Lindsey said. “She FaceTimed auntie Terri and her friend Amilia! The day went by fairly quickly overall. She was a happy little clam all day.”
At the time Lindsey was writing this, Ferris likely was undergoing her second transplant in two years.
“It’s late here and she’s been in for a few hours now. Still a few more to go,” Lindsey wrote. “She had moments of being nervous today but she mostly was just so incredibly brave. Love her soooo much! Can’t wait to hold her again!”
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This was the second time that Ferris underwent a transplant. She went through one on March 6, 2021, at BC Children’s Hospital, but there were complications and the new kidney had to be removed not long after it was put in place.
She has known almost nothing but dialysis, either peritoneal or hemo, for most of her young life. She wasn’t a candidate for a transplant earlier because of her small size and an inability to put on weight and keep it on.
There almost was transplant surgery in December 2020. The Backmeyers were at home in Kamloops when they got the call that a kidney was available for transplant. They left for Vancouver, but the surgery was cancelled at the last minute.
The transplant on March 6, 2021, followed.
After that transplant attempt failed, Lindsey explained:
“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.”
But now, about three years after the Backmeyers were given the go-ahead to look for a living donor, here we are.
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While the Backmeyers were in Toronto awaiting Thursday’s surgery, Leah Scott was in an undisclosed location where she had a kidney surgically removed earlier in the week. That kidney was then transplanted into a recipient as part of the chain that also included Ferris.
“I don’t believe that God ever needs us to fulfill His purpose,” Leah, a mother of three, wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “But I do think He chooses to use us when we are willing to say yes. And I think the blessing is that we get to be part of something so much bigger than ourselves. I believe the day is today.
“As hope builds within this sweet child’s community and this wave of green ribbons spreads and the anticipation rises that her win is here . . . I am so thankful I had the opportunity to say yes. It’s your day sweet girl. We all feel it!”
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Perhaps no one summed up the emotions of all this any better than did Andrew Scott, Leah’s husband, who wrote:
“For anyone not already following along on Leah Scott posts, her recipient now has a working kidney.
“Ferris also got her kidney (Thursday) night. The surgery went well and now she begins her recovery.
“Continue to pray for Leah, Ferris and all of the other donors and recipients. This is a truly touching story and I fight back tears every time I read about lives being changed and all of the support and prayer covering these fighters have.
“Truly humbling.”
TAKING NOTE 