Andi and Emmie Mahoney.Photo:11Alive/Youtube
11Alive/Youtube
Emmie Mahoney was born without kidneys, but thanks to her mother Andi’skidney donation, she’s alive — and celebrated her second birthday this past March.
When Andi Mahoney was pregnant with Emmie, during her routine 20-week scan doctors discovered she had a rare — and often fatal — condition: bilateral renal agenesis. She was developing without kidneys.
With renal agenesis (the absence of a kidney), babies can survive. However, the absence of both in utero (bilateral renal agenesis) impacts the development of the lungs.
TheCleveland Clinicsays 1 in 8,500 newborns are born with bilateral renal agenesis, adding “without kidneys to make urine and amniotic fluid, a fetus’s lungs don’t develop properly. Most newborns die from respiratory failure a few hours after childbirth.”
Once Emmie’s condition was discovered, Andi regularly drove six hours from their home in Jacksonville, Fla., to Miami’s Fetal Institute so that Emmie could have the necessary fluid infusions for survival, according to a report inUSA Today.
However, at the 34-week mark, Mahoney suffered a premature rupture of her membranes, which theNational Institute of Healthsays carries extreme risks for Emmie, including respiratory distress, increased chance for infection — and can be fatal.
Mahoney had found a hospital in Stanford, Calif., that had experience in delivering babies with bilateral renal agenesis, so she “hopped on a flight from Jacksonville to California with my membranes ruptured."
“I wanted to go somewhere that would deliver me my Emmie. Also, they gave me hope that she would live.”
Emmie was born with underdeveloped lungs, and needed dialysis to stay alive. The family — which includes dad Ryan and two older sisters — moved closer to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where Emmie had outpatient dialysis for 30 months.
“I received the best news of my life when I found out we had matching blood types and that I was approved for the surgery,” Mahoney toldUSA Today. “I didn’t think twice. I knew I was giving my kidney to Emmie.”
As theNational Kidney Foundationsays, kidney donations between family members are less likely to be rejected, as the donor and recipient are “genetically similar.”
It’s also less likely to require postoperative dialysis, as “a kidney from a living donor usually functions immediately, because the kidney is out of the body for a very short time.”
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But her road to transplant was a bumpy one, the family shared on theirCaring Bridge site,where they chronicle Emmie’s health journey.
This past February, she ended up in the hospital with severe obstructive sleep apnea, which means that while sleeping, Emmie would stop breathing, as theMayo Clinicexplains.
“These apnea episodes have become so severe that her heart rate is dropping when her oxygen level drops,” wrote Andi, who explained that the condition was delaying her transplant operation.
And after Emmie had surgery to correct her sleep apnea, she landed in the PICU on a ventilator when herblood pressure and oxygenlevels dropped.
When she was stabilized, the transplant was scheduled for June — but then delayed again, after Emmiedeveloped an infectionat her catheter site. The infection spread, and Emmie went intoseptic shock.
But despite all the setbacks, this past July, Andi successfully donated her kidney to her daughter, whom she nicknamed Jellybean.
“Each of Emmie’s surgeons expected complications but none arose,”Andi wrote, adding, “The first news I learned when coming to was that Emmie had peed on the table!!!”
And in August, Emmie “slept in her own bed without dialysis for the first time in her life.”
As the mom shared onFacebookWednesday, ”Three months post transplant today and Emmie is continuing to blow us away with her developmental leaps, talking sentences around us and gaining more confidence as a walker.”
source: people.com
