Hawley boy needs kidney

Posted 8/21/12

HAWLEY, PA — Nine-year-old Bobby Fortuna of Hawley is one of more than 8,000 residents in Pennsylvania that is on the list waiting for a transplant of one organ or another. In Bobby’s case it’s …

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Hawley boy needs kidney

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HAWLEY, PA — Nine-year-old Bobby Fortuna of Hawley is one of more than 8,000 residents in Pennsylvania that is on the list waiting for a transplant of one organ or another. In Bobby’s case it’s a kidney.

He was diagnosed with a serious kidney problem in the summer of 2015. But on January 19, Bobby’s mother Janine Cox Fortuna learned that the situation had progressed to stage-four kidney failure.

Janine is urging the public to visit www.savealifenowpa.org to sign up to become organ donors and to support legislation that would provide more public education about organ donation.

She’s been posting it on her Facebook page, and friends and people from out of state are re-posting and sharing it.

She said of the effort, “It became a little more important now because my son is now in stage-four kidney failure. Originally, when he was diagnosed, we were told that it would be a very slow process, and maybe it would be a few years before he would need a transplant. On January 19 we went to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to see a new doctor because Bobby’s symptoms started to get worse. He was in the hospital for six days at the beginning of the year.

“I don’t know if the illness started to make the kidneys fail faster, or if this is just the process [the illness] is taking. The new doctor is a little more aggressive and he wants to get Bobby blood-typed and tissue-mapped so that he can put him on the list for transplant before he goes on dialysis.”

In Pennsylvania there are over 8,000 people waiting on organ donations, and some of them wait for years. On the list, children normally get a higher place than adults, more severe cases get served before less severe cases, and who’s been waiting longest is taken into account. Janine has no idea at this point, which is still very early in the process, how long Bobby’s wait might be.

If the family found someone that was willing and was a match, the donation could take place right away.

Janine and her family have become close to a donation recipient who went through just such an experience. She said, “My son drag-races with my husband. He taught him how to race cars, and there’s a gentleman there [at the racing facility] who has been talking to us and told us that he had a girl step up for him. They were calling his family in because he was dying of liver failure. And his wife made a Facebook page, and some girl—I think she was close to where they live—just stepped up and gave him 70% of her liver, and saved his life. And he now races, and they talk to me every day now.”

According to the website, the Donate Life PA Act is due for a vote this year. The bill will ensure that more life-saving organs are donated by increasing public education, strengthening oversight of organ donation, clarifying decision-making authority over donations, and reducing unnecessary denials of organ recoveries.

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