Today is National Biliary Atresia Awareness Day. What is biliary atresia, you ask? I certainly didn’t know what it was until our first son Landon was diagnosed with it shortly after his birth. In a nutshell, it is a liver disease in newborns that requires surgery before 12 weeks of age. Over half of the babies who receive the surgery still must have a liver transplant before the age of 2.
A while back, after an impromptu gathering of friends whose children also have BA, I wrote a post entitled “5 Reasons to be an Organ Donor.” The five reasons you can see in the picture above the five reasons I was referencing. Two of the five have already received the Gift of Life. When we think of liver transplants, we sometimes automatically assume it’s a grown man who’s drunk his liver into failure. However, this isn’t the full story. Here’s the original post: (This post was originally published February 6, 2012)
When I turned 16, I remember proudly checking the box “yes” on my driver’s license to be an organ donor. Little did I know, 9 years later, organ donation awareness would become a passion of mine. You see, I always wanted to help others in the case of my death, but in my mind, those “others” were older, their bodies worn out from years of use and/or disease. The thought that a child, much less a baby, could need a life-saving transplant was completely foreign to me. (Read the rest of this post by clicking here)
About Kelli Hays
