Key points from today’s guests:

Stacey Luebrecht, Adalyn’s mother, kidney donor

• Stacey donated a kidney to her daughter Adalyn, who was born with a rare genetic disorder.
• Doctors at Children's Mercy and The University of Kansas Health System helped the family through the transplant process.
• Stacey underwent surgery at The University of Kansas Health System to remove her kidney to be transplanted into her daughter at Children’s Mercy.
• The recovery for both has been good. Adalyn has gained weight and is doing everything a toddler can do.
• Stacey said they were just living a normal life and all of a sudden it was turned upside down.
• She has gained a lot of trust in people to take care of her daughter and advocating for her has become second nature.

Alex Luebrecht, Adalyn’s father

• It was difficult to help with the care of his wife and daughter, but it was something he had to do.
• The situation meant a lot of travel to and from the hospital and restrictions on where they could go to eat.

Dr. Sean Kumer, transplant surgeon, associate chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System

• Living kidney donors can be done in an elective manner, so we can plan accordingly.
• Also, kidneys from living donors on average last about three to five years longer than kidneys from a deceased donor.
• This procedure took great coordination with Children’s Mercy.

Dr. Richard Hendrickson, pediatric surgeon, Children’s Mercy Kansas City

• So once you get a match, then we get some imaging on the kidneys to check the artery and veins to see what side you could take -- the left or the right side -- but also the size of the kidney.
• We have the evaluate the imaging of the donor to see if we can fit that kidney into a young child.
• We have to be careful about the size -- not only top-down and front-back, but the depth as well to make sure we can fit it inside.
• If we have to meet families under these circumstances, organ donation is wonderful. They can be a live donor like we have here, or it can be a deceased donor.
• The beauty about this situation is Adalyn gets back to being a normal child.

Wednesday, May 22 at 8 a.m. is the next Open Mics with Dr. Stites. Meet one trainer dedicating her entire career to helping cancer survivors become cancer thrivers through fitness that fights cancer.

ATTENTION MEDIA: Please note access is with Microsoft Teams:

Join on your computer or mobile app

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 235 659 792 451
Passcode: 6CSfGE

Download Teams | Join on the web

Or call in (audio only)

+1 913-318-8863,566341546#   United States, Kansas City

TVU Grid link: UoK_Health_SDI

Restream links: Facebook.com/kuhospital

YouTube.com/kuhospital

Send advance questions to medicalnewsnetwork@kumc.edu.