Alex was born 3\/26\/19. We were aware he had a minor heart defect, and initially he seemed healthy. He was admitted to Children’s Hospital of WI a few days after birth for high bilirubin levels. He underwent an extensive work up, and after levels decreased a bit he was discharged with close monitoring and suspicion of liver disease.
Bilirubin started to rise again after a few weeks and he had a liver biopsy at 1 month old that confirmed the diagnosis of biliary atresia- a rare infant liver disease in which bile ducts are scarred over, causing bile to back up into the liver. This leads to liver failure. At 6 weeks old on 5\/6\/19 he had the Kasai Procedure, which attempt to reestablish bile flow.
Unfortunately, only 1\/3 of Kasai procedures are successful, and BA is the leading cause of liver transplantation in infants and children.
Alex’s Kasai was unsuccessful and he was listed for liver transplant on 12\/9\/2019. He has spent much of his life in and out of the hospital with fevers, infections, and complications from ascites.
We are currently undergoing living donor evaluations to get this boy a new liver and prevent him from having to wait a long time on the waiting list.<\/p>\n
The Children’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’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’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":"
Alex was born 3\/26\/19. We were aware he had a minor heart defect, and initially he seemed healthy. He was admitted to Children’s Hospital of WI a few days after birth for high bilirubin levels. He underwent an extensive work up, and after levels decreased a bit he was discharged with close monitoring and suspicion […]<\/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\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamalexa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}