After life-saving transplant, he's just a normal little boy
The 2-year-old, who spent most of last year in the hospital after a transplant, acts like any other active toddler.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published April 28, 2004
[Times photos: James Borchuck]
Lisa Hawk, left, kisses 2-year-old Aiden. "I don't think any of us knew if he'd make it or not," she said.
Aiden Hawk climbs down from playground equipment at Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg on Monday. Aiden received his liver transplant in December 2002 in Atlanta and then battled infections and organ rejection.
ST. PETERSBURG - Aiden Hawk, the infant who was given less than two years to live without a liver transplant, celebrated his second birthday a few days ago.
It has been more than a year since he was rushed to Atlanta for a new liver.
"It's just an amazing thing to see him so normal," said his mother, 28-year-old Lisa Hawk.
She and her husband, Joey, take great joy in the active toddler who clambers happily on playground equipment at Crescent Lake Park, shoots basketballs into the colorful toddler-height hoop in the back yard and empties his toy box with wild abandon.
Aiden used to take 22 medications. Now he's down to two, although he will always need immunosuppressants. His tummy bears the scar - an upside-down T - from his surgery.
"In the beginning, we were overly cautious," said Aiden's father, who is 30, recalling the tenuous months after his son's surgery. "We were extremely, extremely scared."
For the Hawks, who will celebrate their third wedding anniversary in June, getting to this point has been a test of fortitude and faith. They couldn't have done it, they say, without the support of family and friends, co-workers, people from their church and in Joey Hawk's hometown of Perry, Ga., and even strangers who had heard their story.
"I'll go to the park and I'll call his name and say, "Aiden, come here,' and they'll say, that's not the baby that had the transplant?" Mrs. Hawk said.
Nurses who have cared for Aiden get teary-eyed when they see him now, she added.
"I don't think any of us knew if he'd make it or not," she said.
The Hawks' ordeal began within weeks of Aiden's birth. The baby's jaundice failed to clear up, and doctors diagnosed him with biliary atresia, a disorder that destroys the ducts that carry bile from the liver to the intestine. Children with the disease, his parents were told, live for about two years. Doctors said Aiden would need a liver transplant to survive.
Joey Hawk, a manager for Florida Gardens and Landscaping in Tampa, tried unsuccessfully to be a donor for his son. So did his brother, Alan Hawk, and Aiden's godmother, Jennifer Ortenau. Days before Christmas 2002, the Hawks got the good news that Sara Mason, an online friend from Tennessee, would be a suitable match. That night, though, another liver became available from an infant who had died, and 8-month-old Aiden was airlifted to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta for the transplant surgery.
But it would be a while before life got much easier. Last year, Aiden spent 200 days either at or near Children's Healthcare of Atlanta or at All Children's Hospital battling infections and his body's attempts to reject his new liver.
"Up until the tail end of last year, we were still having to go to Atlanta," his father said.
"It really had begun to wear on us, and I had returned to work full time and I was trying to balance worrying about Aiden and work. I think we had reached to the point where we had such a weight on our shoulders and we had even debated picking up and moving to Atlanta. When we couldn't take anymore, it just went away. This year, we are really excited that as summer approaches, we are going to be able to do more, take him to the beach, teach him to swim."
Monday afternoon Aiden eagerly greeted visitors to his parents' Crescent Heights home. He ran and laughed, swung his Jeff Wiggles doll and pointed to baby pictures of himself in the thick scrapbook his mother had put together of the past two years.
His parents still need to watch him closely. They carry hand-sanitizing wipes and lotions to protect him from viruses, and he wears a mask when he visits All Children's Hospital for his monthly lab tests. Still, the Hawks are trying not to be too anxious.
"The hospital's theory is you can't keep him in a bubble," Mrs. Hawk said.
"We live a normal life. We just have to be careful around viruses. We can't be around live vaccines. Other than that, it's a lot of hand washing. . . . What they say to do is slowly kind of expose him now. Go to the park. Go to the mall. Go to church. Slowly expose him to those places."
Aiden will need to take immune suppression drugs for the rest of his life. His treatment, which is expensive, is being covered with insurance and donations friends and family have made to the American Liver Foundation. Members of North East Park Baptist Church, where the Hawks attend, its preschool, Perry United Methodist Church in Perry, Ga., and the Chronicle of the Horse, a weekly publication for the sport horse industry, are among the biggest contributors to the fund.
The Hawks are staunch supporters of organ donation. Mrs. Hawk wears a green organ donation ribbon and has an organ donation sticker on her sport utility vehicle.
"I think most people intend to donate their organs, but because they don't communicate that with their loved ones, their wishes are not fulfilled," she said.
"The most important thing is to talk to your family and friends and let them know that you would like to donate your organs and save others' lives. I have many friends whose children are waiting and I know some children who have died waiting, and it's something that doesn't need to happen."
