Mother and Son To Undergo Transplant

By George Mallet

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  • The mother is giving her son one of her kidneys. Video by tmj4.com

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MENOMONEE FALLS – Nearly five months after Parker Scaife’s family and friends began fundraising efforts to finance a life-saving kidney transplant, that operation is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Parker’s mother, Lindsay Scaife, will have one of her kidneys removed at Froedtert Hospital.  The organ will then be promptly implanted in Parker’s body at Children’s Hospital.

When we first met the Scaifes in October, Parker was nearing the lifetime maximum on his health insurance benefits. The Scaife’s knew the transplant to free Parker of daily, twelve hour dialysis treatments would begin a year in which the child’s medical bills could easily exceed a half million dollars.

The Scaifes began getting guidance from The Children's Organ Transplant Association.

A Web site was set up to help raise funds for Parker's transplant. That web address is www.cotaforparkers.com. 

Donations can still be made in person at any Wells Fargo Bank.  The account number is 6733374547. 

Donations can also be mailed to the Children's Organ Transplant Association, 2501 West COTA Drive, Bloomington, IN 47403. Checks or money orders should be made payable to COTA with "In Honor of Parker S" written on the memo line.

Those fundraising efforts have already been exceedingly successful.

“Oh it’s been amazing,” Dustin Scaife said Tuesday night.  “The response from the community has been awesome.  We’ve raised over forty eight thousand dollars in just over four months.”

Still, Dustin is a bundle of nerves as he anticipates Wednesday morning when both his wife and son will undergo invasive surgery.

“With both of them in surgery, it’s going to be a long day,” Dustin said.

Meantime, Lindsay is the very picture of grace under pressure.

“You know, truthfully it’s the greatest feeling in the world,” she said with a smile as she sat on the family sofa with her husband and baby.  “We’re so fortunate that one of us was a match for Parker.  We don’t have the stress of waiting for a deceased donor, and not knowing when the kidney is going to get here.”