Kai and his new liver

Malachi is a volleyball player. He’s darn good too, being 6’6” and left handed, he was becoming a weapon out on the court. Malachi wanted to play volleyball in college and after only 1 year of touring with his A-5 volleyball team he was getting scouted for some great colleges. He could definitely go D3 or even D1 if he kept practicing and building his skills.

This last year he began developing an onset of problems that began with tiredness & nosebleeds. He had always even extremely healthy his entire life. A few stitches here & there but never even an antibiotic his whole life until all this happened. We discovered that he somehow came down with an autoimmune disease at age 19 where his body was attacking his liver. Normally something like this would not cause actual liver failure, especially so quickly, so no one is exactly sure what caused the sudden downturn. They said it almost looked like it was poisoning of some sort. He is one of those people that came down with this mysterious hepatitis case from “unknown causes.” Malachi had been EXTREMELY pristine about his diet, eating primarily raw all organic foods & was on the antifungal diet. He began trying to heal naturally. It may have been too late?

The most amazing blessing is how friends and family showed up in ways greater than we could have ever imagined. Shannon’s parents rented an apartment in the same complex that Malachi was living in. They spent time and effort bringing Malachi to all of his appointments and treatments. We had friends making incredible custom meals for Malachi to eat.

After a month or so of treatments and healthy diets and cleanses Malachi had not turned a corner yet. There were days where he wouldn’t even leave his bed. His belly would fill up with fluid and have to be drained so that he didn’t feel like he was about to pop.

The third time Malachi had his stomach drained the doctors made a grave error and nicked an organ with the instrument used to pull fluids out. Without knowing it they created an internal bleed that almost took his life. Ever since Kai began getting nosebleeds, he started having a problem clotting. If he ever bled, it took a VERY long time for him to stop bleeding.

By the time they found the fatal error we nearly lost Malachi. He went into Hemorrhagic shock. They did surgery on him to close up the wound from the nick. After that, they decided to keep him unconscious. Being on the machines they had him on, combined with his preexisting problems shot his liver scores (called a MELD score) way up & put him at the top of the liver transplant list. This transplant team was actively looking for a new liver for Kai & turned down 4 due to them being the wrong size, age, etc. They found one from someone close in age where nearly every organ was harvested. Within 24 hrs he had a new liver. This whole situation took place in a time frame of 5 days.

Malachi is child #4 of 12, so it is not an easy feat to spend so much time with him in Texas in the ICU. He is still in a very volatile state and will have a massive recovery and need a lot of help. Good news is there will BE a recovery!!

There are many needs and any amount raised will help. Thank you for taking time to read his story and thank you for your donation. We are so grateful for your support.