A liver transplant can’t come quick enough for young Kenzy Oliver.
Seven-year-old Kenzy was placed as a high priority on the transplant list after a check-up at the beginning of the year revealed the liver condition he was born with brought on a serious breathing complaint.
The young lad is the only case Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital has seen with both debilitating ailments, according to his parents.
At any given moment, the phone of the Arbroath family could ring telling them a liver has been made available.
From here, Kenzy would be airlifted from Ninewells straight to London’s King’s College Hospital where he would undergo the transplant.
But the wait is leaving Kenzy weaker by the day and his parents ever more anxious.
“It needs to happen as soon as possible,” said dad, Nicky.
“Ever since he was placed on the list it has been a waiting game and every day since it’s been getting more difficult to just sit by waiting for the phone to go.
“His liver has lasted for so long due to an operation he underwent when he was six weeks old.
“But after he was diagnosed with the syndrome affecting his lungs, he was immediately put on the transplant list. His conditions are gradually getting worse at the minute and there may come a time he won’t be strong enough to undergo the transplant when a liver is available.
“We don’t want it to get to the stage where he is left on his own for the worst to happen. That’s why we need this transplant to come as quickly as it can.”
Kenzy was born with biliary atresia, a condition in which inflammation develops within the bile ducts around the time of birth. How he contracted it is unknown.
At six weeks, he was flown from Ninewells to King’s College Hospital to undergo an operation on his liver.
Since then, along with his parents, Nicky and Michelle, the Warddykes Primary School pupil has been attending regular check-ups at Ninewells Hospital as well as King’s College Hospital.
It was revealed at a check-up in January that he had contracted the breathing condition, hepatopulmanory syndrome, which was brought on by his failing liver.
Since then, he has been reliant on oxygen tanks to assist his breathing every hour of every day and has to take them everywhere he goes.
He also has an enlarged spleen, his gallbladder has been removed, and has a hernia from an operation he underwent when he was a tot.
Nicky, father of Kenzy and five-year-old Skye, and stepfather of Tyler, 12, said the help his family has received from Ninewells Hospital and Kenzy’s school has been “amazing”.
The help his family has received has also gone as far as staff at Warddykes Primary setting up a fundraising campaign to assist the family’s travel costs.
A Justgiving page has been set up to raise £1,000 to cover a portion of the costs and a raffle is to be held at Kenzy’s school.
“When a liver is available, we will be airlifted to King’s College Hospital so that Kenzy can undergo the operation,” added Nicky.
“But if the liver is not a match for Kenzy, for whatever reason, then we are left to make our own way back home.
“So, the fundraising to help us with travel costs to and from London is such a great thought. .”
To donate visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lorna-kydd