 By TOM HOWARD Of The Gazette Staff Bryan Dowdle is nearing his goal of competing in the U.S. Transplant Games this month thanks to the efforts of his first-grade classmates at Orchard Elementary.
Lori Booke’s class recently presented Bryan, a kidney transplant recipient, with a giant check for $113.10. It represents the proceeds from a fund-raiser in which students sold dozens of lollipops. “That’s a lot of money,” first-grader Cullen Emory confided, pointing to where he and other students signed the 4-foot-long check. Cullen added that Bryan’s classmates have helped him in any way that they can. “We’ve been playing with him,” he said. Booke said the fund-raiser for Bryan was a learning experience for students. Not only did they practice writing their names on the check, they worked on their math skills by counting the money raised in the lollipop sale, she said. Bryan plans to participate in the 50-meter dash in the Transplant Games at Lake Buena Vista, Fla., June 21-24. He gets excited whenever his mother, Shelly, calls up the web site for the Disney All-Star Resort, where the family will stay during the Transplant Games. “Our hotel has a swimming pool shaped like a piano. He’s excited about seeing that,” Shelly said. Bryan is an active 8-year-old who openly shows affection to his mother. But his life has been filled with challenges. He also likes to play with his father, Scott. “I was born five weeks early at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah,” says the web page that Shelly developed for Bryan. “My kidneys weren't working well at all, but I was alive. Of course the doctors kept telling Mommy that I would die. I'm too stubborn for that!” Bryan has persevered through a lifetime of health-related challenges. His infancy was filled with numerous surgeries and other complicated treatments. At age 1, he began receiving nightly peritoneal dialysis. In peritoneal dialysis, a solution was introduced into the abdominal cavity through a catheter. The solution and waste products from the body are then drained. “We had to do it every night while Bryan was sleeping,” Shelly said. “We could do it ourselves so we got used to it.” Finally, in June of 1997, 5-year-old Bryan had a kidney transplant – his mother was the donor – at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Bryan’s life has improved since he received the transplant, but he still has to be careful about infection. Shelly has been raising money to pay for the family’s travel expenses to the Transplant Games. “We’ve raised enough to pay for our hotel and plane tickets. We still need to raise about $600 to pay for food,” Shelly said. Any excess donations will be transferred to Bryan’s health fund. The Transplant Games was developed to increase public awareness about transplant recipients. More than 67,000 Americans are now on a waiting list to receive life-saving organ transplants, according to the National Kidney Foundation. Donations can be sent to: Bryan Dowdle's Transplant Games Fund, c/o First Interstate Bank, P.O. Box 30918, Billings, Mont. 59116. More information on Bryan is available at: http://www.mcn.net/~shellyd or by calling 254-2367.
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