By Elizabeth Simpson, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Jul. 11–VIRGINIA BEACH — Like any competitive 5-year-old, Sabrina Waide wants to win.
She jogs in her Virginia Beach yard every day to prepare for running and swimming races she’ll join in this weekend. When she wakes up, she asks, “How many more days?”
In the eyes of her adoptive parents, Melissa and Bill Waide, she’s already a winner for having endured years of life-and-death moments and a transplant operation that’s been done on only a small number of children.
Sabrina will take part in the U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh, a national competition held every two years for recipients of donated organs.
The purpose of the event, which begins today and continues through Wednesday, is to highlight the success of transplant and to honor donors and recipients.
People who have had a transplant for at least six months are eligible. Many of the competitors have had kidney, lung, heart and liver transplants. Sabrina falls into a smaller category of those who have received a small intestine from a living donor.
She was born in 2003 with a birth defect called gastroschisis, in which the intestines form on the outside of the body. The intestines were reinserted during surgery shortly after birth. Most babies with the condition recover fine, but Sabrina’s small intestine was so damaged, she couldn’t digest food.
She lived at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters for 14 months and received all her nutrition through intravenous feedings.
Her biological parents were young and not able to provide care for such an involved medical condition, Melissa said. They gave up parental rights.
Sabrina was about 6 months old when Melissa met her and had been moved from the hospital’s neonatal unit to a general care floor.
Melissa is a nurse practitioner in the hospital’s plastic surgery department, and was called to check some tough-to-heal skin wounds around Sabrina’s IV sites.
Soon Melissa was visiting during lunch and popping in after work to spend time with the baby.
“She had this allure about her that reached out and grabbed you,” Melissa said. “She was very nosy about everything that was going on.”
Eventually, it became clear that Sabrina needed an organ transplant or she would die. She was running out of places where IV lines could be inserted.
Melissa worried that Sabrina’s chances for receiving an organ would not be good if she did not have a family to care for her. So she asked her husband, Bill, and their three children how they would feel about becoming Sabrina’s foster family.
“She didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I felt she deserved a chance for organ donation.”
Her two sons, Kenny and Ryan, were 17 and 13 at the time, and her daughter, Holly, was 9. Bill and the children met Sabrina for the first time at CHKD.
“She was adorable,” remembers Holly, who’s now 13. “She was very quiet. I held her on my lap and took her for a wagon ride.”
Bill and Melissa went through foster parent training. Sabrina went home with them when she was 14 months old.
She was put on the list for a small intestine donation, but doctors were concerned she might die before one became available.
Meanwhile, a surgeon at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago had begun doing a fairly new procedure using live donors rather than the more common transplant of intestines from deceased donors.
Another CHKD patient, Carter Wells, was among the first children to receive the live donor small intestine transplant, in 2003 in Chicago. The 23-month-old boy’s mother was the donor.
That’s how Waide learned about that type of surgery. It has the best chance of success when a family member provides the organ. So CHKD staff approached Sabrina’s biological mother. Even though she had agreed to give up the child for adoption, the 23-year-old woman said she would donate a portion of her small intestine.
The operation took place on Oct. 19, 2004, in Chicago.
“She gave Sabrina life again,” Melissa said. “She gave her a second chance.”
Sabrina’s biological mother stayed there about a week, then returned home. The Waides have not had contact with her since.
Sabrina recovered in Chicago for eight weeks, and came home in December 2004. Her adoption became final the following October.
She can eat some foods but still receives much of her nutrition through a tube in her belly because she has developed several food allergies, probably due to her condition and anti-rejection medications.
The 40-pound girl is thriving, though. She plays soccer, takes ballet lessons and is getting ready to start kindergarten in the fall. A mottled, raised area on her tummy is the only visible evidence of the transplant.
There are still only a small number of children nationwide who have had the same surgery. Carter died in 2006 at age 5 after his third transplant failed. Some recipients are doing well, but there are so few that the long-term prognosis is unknown.
“You take every day as gift, and you’re grateful for it,” Melissa said.
Once they adopted Sabrina, the Waides decided to continue being foster parents. In December 2006, they took in a baby boy waiting for a liver transplant. He died in February 2007, at less than a year old, before an organ became available. They’re now foster parents to two brothers who are 2 years and 9 months old.
“There are children who need love and a home,” Melissa said. “That’s not too much for a child to ask for.”
Sabrina, her parents, her sister and her two foster brothers will load up the car today to head to Pittsburgh, where Sabrina will be one of 35 organ recipients from Virginia to compete in the U.S. Transplant Games. Team Virginia — 100 people strong — also includes donors and the families of both recipients and donors.
Melissa has told Sabrina not to worry about what place she comes in, just to run and swim. The girl with the pigtails, though, has a one-word answer for what she plans to do.
“Win.”
Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, [email protected]
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