{"id":4,"date":"2021-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cota1.wpengine.com\/cotaforethansbattle\/our-story\/"},"modified":"2021-03-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T00:00:00","slug":"our-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/our-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Spraggs was born April 04, 2003. His parents are Manuel Spraggs and Sheila O&rsquo;Shea. He also has 3 siblings: Mary, Miah and Aubrey. He was raised in the small town of Matthews, MO. Ethan likes to listen to music, play action-packed video games and prefers computer over any other consoles. Ethan will graduate this spring in May 2021. He would like to attend college and achieve a bachelor&rsquo;s in computer science, in hopes of one day designing video games for computers.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan was born with what is known in general terms as a Pancake Kidney. Basically, this means that his kidneys formed one flat shaped kidney, located in the lower back region, rather than 2 normal kidneys located in the abdominal area. This is a very rare congenital defect, one of the rarest of all renal ectopias.<\/p>\n<p>In 2016 Ethan was taken to the ER in Sikeston, Mo, where they found out he had a severe kidney infection. They sent him home with antibiotics and to follow up with his pediatrician. Ethan&rsquo;s pediatrician ran tests and lab work to test for kidney function. After seeing the results, he felt it was in Ethan&rsquo;s best interest to refer him to Children&rsquo;s Hospital in St. Louis, MO.<\/p>\n<p>At Children&rsquo;s Hospital he was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure and would need follow up visits to keep track of Ethan&rsquo;s deteriorating kidney function. His kidney was failing, and it was just a matter of time before he would need a transplant. Since that time, Ethan has had regular visits with his nephrologist, who has tracked his declining kidney function. <\/p>\n<p>Ethan is now in need of a kidney. He is now active on the transplant list. He is following doctor&rsquo;s orders and doing what is asked of him in hopes of a call soon.<\/p>\n<p>We have partnered with the Children&rsquo;s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) for assistance with transplant-related expenses. Please consider donating to COTA in honor of Ethan and help us in fighting Ethan&rsquo;s Battle.<\/p>\n<p>The Children&#8217;s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation&rsquo;s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA&rsquo;s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Spraggs was born April 04, 2003. His parents are Manuel Spraggs and Sheila O&rsquo;Shea. He also has 3 siblings: Mary, Miah and Aubrey. He was raised in the small town of Matthews, MO. Ethan likes to listen to music, play action-packed video games and prefers computer over any other consoles. Ethan will graduate this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforethansbattle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}