My 12 year-old son, Boston, had a kidney transplant on March 13, 2025 and on March 29 he had pain where the new kidney was. We went to the Hospital of Mississauga. Still not sure what was happening, Toronto Sick Kids came to get us. Meanwhile, my son’s blood pressure was dropping to dangerous levels 56/27. We were then transported to Sick Kids.
When we got there, the ER room was already filled with people, putting in IV’s in feet and arms, nurses pushing blood into my son, another one doing an ultrasound. They then took my son to the ICU and we were later told that he had an internal bleed and needed immediate surgery to find where the bleed was. They also advised that there was a risk of my son dying. Any parent’s worst nightmare. At that time they called a “Code Transfusion” and we watched as someone was bringing up coolers and coolers of blood to the OR.
Around 4 hours later they told us that they found the bleed and he was in stable condition. He had about another 3-4 hours of surgery after that. He was started on dialysis, had to have his transplanted kidney removed and almost lost his left leg due to a clot in an artery.
Boston received 26 transfusions over the course of his stay at Sick Kids. Had there not been donors, there might not have been blood there to save my son. The many donors that would have contributed to this amount of transfusions? I can’t thank them enough. I wish we could tell each and every one of you thank you. Boston is still doing dialysis and waiting to get back on the transplant list. He may still need blood in the future and we know Canadian Blood Services and all their donors will be there to help, like you helped Boston in the past and so many others like him.
