Flying high

Three months after her receiving her new kidney from her dad Damien, Bridie Jordan is making leaps and bounds in her development. Her mother Laura said she’s put on a few kilograms and already grown over a centimetre since the transplant. She’s also found her appetite.

“She’s gone from not eating a great deal before the transplant, to now eating everything, the grocery bill is creeping up,” said Mrs Jordan.

“She didn’t have a great deal of energy, but now she’s just going in leaps and bounds and growing and starting to talk. There are just so many things she’s started doing developmentally."

One of the benefits of Bridie’s newfound energy is that she can play with her brother Dusty more often.

“She plays non-stop now, from six till six she’s full of energy, she keeps up with her brother.

“He thinks it’s great, he tries to wrestle her all the time. She does love a wrestle, but with boundaries. He loves it, they play a lot together. He’s kind of gotten his sibling that he always wanted.”

Mrs Jordan said that Bridie is now able to walk on her own a lot more and that her back is feeling much better now that she doesn’t have to carry her so often.

“It makes life a lot easier when your four-year-old starts to do four-year-old things.”

Mrs Jordan said the kidney is working perfectly and that there has been a reduction in the amount of medication that Bridie needs on a day-to-day basis. The main thing they have to watch out for now is fluid intake.

“We have to be really careful with is her fluid intake. She needs to have at least a litre a day. It’s okay in the heat, but I think on cooler days you kind of forget. Pre-transplant she was limited to 400 milliliters a day and so it was a bit tricky to take that up to a litre.”

Mr Jordan has recovered well also and just had his three-month check-up. Doctors have advised him that he just has to maintain a healthy diet and stay fit.

The family have also benefited from the services of the Wings4Kids charity, which helps rural families attend specialist appointments or procedures in the city. Last week they got to fly to Sydney from Gilgandra for Bridie’s check-up rather than take a nearly 10-hour round trip on the road. Mrs Jordan said the service took a lot of pressure of the family.

“It was amazing. We had a couple of trips in January where we drove to Sydney and they were really big days. Bridie’s alright for a couple of hours, but on the back end of the trip she gets very cranky, like most four-year old’s.

“Being in the car for so long it was a lot harder to get fluid into her as well and that was showing when we got down there and did her blood tests. So, it’s really handy to go down and back in one day and still have some light left in the day to do things.”

Mrs Jordan said that Bridie loved being in the plane. She said it seems like the family might have a plane addict on their hands.

“She loves it, the first trip from Dubbo she was a little bit wary when there was a bit of turbulence.

“Every morning she actually wakes up and asks if we’re going on the plane, we have a plane addict now. The pilot told us that once you have a plane addict it’s hard to stop them.”