How did Ferris Backmeyer handle Friday after having undergone a kidney transplant overnight Thursday?
Ferris, 6, asked to call her friend Amilia.
As Ferris’s mother, Lindsey, wrote: “We really couldn’t have asked for a better day!!”
The Backmeyers — Lindsey and Pat, with daughters Ferris, Ksenia and Tavis — are from Kamloops. They have been in Toronto for a couple of weeks now, first preparing for Ferris to undergo a kidney transplant at the Hospital for Sick Children and now going through the recovery phase.
Ferris has had kidney issues for almost all of her young life, and Lindsey has done a wonderful job of documenting it all on Facebook.
Doing this no doubt is therapy of sorts for Lindsey, but it also is a way to keep in touch with family and friends via one posting, thus cutting out the need for a thousand different messages.
We can only imagine how many hours Lindsey has spent sitting in hospitals or Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver over the past six years, potential scenarios flipping through her mind with uncontrolled randomness.
When she posted in the wee hours of Saturday, it was impossible not to feel the excitement that was coursing through her system.
“I had considered what it might look like for things to have gone smoothly,” she allowed, “but, even then, it didn’t look like (Friday) . . . it was smoooooth!!!”
How smooth was it?
“Urine output amazing all day long. She weaned off really high doses of (norepinephrine) once she woke up! Maintained her (blood pressure) throughout the day, including when she napped this evening! Ultrasound looked great. She hardly skipped a beat.”
Ferris talked with her mother “about the things we played with (Thursday).”
And, yes, she asked “to phone her friend Amilia.”
But wait . . . there’s more!
“She was awake for several hours,” Lindsey continued. “Sat up a bunch of times. Played a bit. Ate some food. Was mostly kept comfortable. If she didn’t have her history she would have definitely been sent out of ICU (Friday) evening! Like holy heck girl!! Way to goooooo!! I’m so proud of her.”
However, you can’t have been on this ride with Ferris for these past years and 
not come to expect the worst. You know how it goes . . . hope for the best and . . . It’s only human nature that the Backmeyers have experienced that time and time again.
At one point, Lindsey wrote: “I hate living in this constant fear of all the worst things.”
So why should things be any different this time?
“I’ve found myself holding my breath a lot of the day. Waiting for her to start to crash. But she didn’t,” Lindsey wrote. “Beyond my wildest expectations, we have gotten to the other side. I am constantly checking myself as to not get too excited. Knowing there are going to be some really hard days ahead.”
Lindsey, who has worked as a respiratory therapist at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, knows that her youngest daughter “definitely isn’t out of the woods in terms of clotting and/or bleeding for that matter.”
But there have been so many positive signs since surgery that “I’m gonna choose to celebrate today as a huge (bleeping) win!! Im gonna allow myself to dream a little that things could actually just be amazing. We are coming from such a bumpy world that we were ready for something new if even if it came with a different kind of hard.”
OK. So what’s next?
Lindsey is anxiously awaiting Ferris’s being moved out of ICU and onto a ward, which will mean mother will get to sleep next to daughter.
“I’m exhausted,” Lindsey admitted. “My one-hour attempt at a nap ended up being four solid hours. Ferris napped late in the day so has just fallen asleep. I can’t sleep at her bedside so I’m off to find a ‘parent recliner’ with hopes Ferris is asleep for the night!”
And don’t think for a moment that the Backmeyers, even with all that has been happening, aren’t aware of the thoughts and prayers and love that have been sent their way.
“Once again, thanks so much to everyone for all the support,” Lindsey wrote “It’s been incredible!! It’s been exactly what we didn’t know we needed!! My brain is super fried, so the words really aren’t there to genuinely express how loved we feel! But we feel it! It’s so tangible! Love you guys.”
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Leah Scott, a mother of three from Kamloops, was involved in Ferris’s transplant via the paired exchange program. Ferris and Leah weren’t matches, but Leah gave a kidney to a stranger in order for Ferris to receive a kidney from someone else, all as part of a chain.
On Saturday, Leah wrote:
“The final part of our journey to donation and transplant was spent finalizing testing, prepping, and a lot of breath-holding while we were continually reminded this could be called off right up to the day. And 20 days before our original surgery date, it was.
“For some painstaking days it all hung in the balance. But we got a new date. In two months. It felt too long. Too far. Yet in the end it set the stage for me to do some very important things at home for my own family and allowed my buddy to be her strongest and most ready that her family had ever seen.
“The timing was indeed perfect. The week was pretty textbook. My recipient took their kidney right away and was doing well. My buddy defied all odds and rocked her surgery better than anyone could have hoped for. It played out just as I had envisioned hundreds of times.
“I am forever changed. My faith is deeper and richer. I am humbled to have been called to something so much bigger than myself. The honour has been mine to be part of giving life to others.”
TAKING NOTE 