Mom donates kidney to infant son with rare defect

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    MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — “Special” probably isn’t a strong enough word to describe this Mother’s Day holiday for one Plymouth family.

Autumn Wiste donated one of her kidneys Friday to her youngest son, Lucas. She was released from the hospital Sunday and got to visit him.

“I think it was almost perfect,” Autumn said.

The 13-month-old boy was born with renal failure due to a rare birth defect.

“Basically for the first year of his whole life, we were on dialysis for 12 hours a day,” Lucas’s father, Josh, said.

Lucas was in the hospital for the first three-and-a-half months of his life.

“The fact that he’s in our family, it just means so much to us,” Autumn said. “He’s such a happy little guy, and through all this, like, he’s just smiling.”

The kidney should carry Lucas into his 20s and maybe beyond. Autumn was a perfect match for her son. Like Autumn, M Health Fairview transplant coordinator Annie Doyle is also a mother of three.

“Kidney donors and moms definitely have this common denominator of unconditional love,” Doyle said. “Just being able to be a part of it and making her journey hopefully a little smoother was very rewarding.”

It was a similar feeling for Dr. Karthik Ramanathan, the surgeon who performed the transplant.

“You get to see this, you know, really the triumph of the human spirit come through and someone step up to help someone they care about,” Ramanathan said. “Specific with Mother’s Day, it’s always really touching to see the bond between mother and child.”

Autumn was home relaxing the rest of Sunday, spending time with Josh and their other two sons, Wyatt and Dexter.

“I know most moms would do [what Autumn did], but it’s just so special,” Josh said.

More than 107,000 people are on the kidney transplant wait list, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

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