Transplant success is little Liam’s superpower
A FIVE-YEAR-OLD boy likened his twin brother to Superman to help his sibling cope with the pain of kidney failure treatment.
Liam O’Connor, an identical twin from Artane in Dublin, was diagnosed with kidney failure after he was born eight weeks prematurely.
He was too weak to go on dialysis, which removes waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys stop working.
Liam suffered dramatic weight loss and had to be fed through a tube. The traumatised little boy was throwing up as often as 15 times a day.
The twins’ mother Denise, 42, who worked as a bank official before the boys were born, says: ‘He had no life. We had no life as a family. His bedroom was like a hospital room fitted with machines and wires and he couldn’t have any toys as everything needed to be sterile. We were up five or six times a night fixing his wires if he got tangled in them as he slept.
‘But his twin brother, Daniel, and our seven-year-old daughter Caoilinn were so amazing to him.
‘They used to pretend he was Superman whenever he had to do injections because he loved superheroes so much.’
Both Denise and her husband Patrick, 43, who works in the financial industry, tried to see if their kidneys were a match for Liam. Patrick was confirmed as a match and began the testing procedure in January, but this process can take up to six months without any guarantee of success.
That month Liam was placed on the transplant list, where the average waiting time for a child is usually three years.
But after just six weeks on the list, a donor was found.
Recalling the moment, Denise told the MoS: ‘I’ll never forget it when we got that call at 6am, I thought I was dreaming. We brought him straight in, he was prepped and was in
surgery by midday. ‘After four days of being attached to wires, I went out of his room to get a cup of coffee and came back in, and he was climbing on top of the hospital chairs trying to pull the machine down. ‘I thought, “this is that mischievous little boy that we have wanted to see for so long”.’ Since his operation, Liam has begun to eat solid foods for the first time in his life. He has also attended school for the first time and has been able to swim and play football with friends.
Liam’s battle is one of the stories that will be highlighted today at the Irish Kidney Association’s 37th annual service of remembrance and thanksgiving. The service – which airs on RTÉ One at 11am – is an opportunity for organ donor families to remember loved ones and transplant recipients to give thanks.
Denise said: ‘You don’t really take an interest in something like organ donation until it comes to your doorstep. But when it did we realised just how important it is.’