Tomi is two years old and has been waiting for a kidney
since April 2022
.
His mother, Soledad Moyano Henderson, started an awareness campaign about pediatric donation.
“I want him to have the life of any child, to be able to play and not have to live in hospitals,” she says.
From the first minutes of his life, Tomás began to constantly go to hospitals.
In just two years he went through many painful interventions that at one point
put his life in suspense
.
At seven months old he had septic shock, underwent 20 surgeries in total and spent 20 days in a coma with a 2% chance of life.
“Little by little he recovered perfectly.
Now, he does dialysis three times a week at the Italian Hospital.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we leave the house at 5:30 and return at 1:00 p.m. He has home confinement,” explains his mother.
For almost a year, Tomi
has been on the Incucai waiting list
, he suffers from
chronic kidney failure
and is waiting for a kidney.
“The doctors told us that dialysis, although it allows him to live, in the long term is degenerative, and can further aggravate the condition, because after the septic shock he had many catheters that caused the vascular accesses to thrombose.
Of the four accesses he has, only one works well,” he said.
“If a kidney doesn't arrive soon for Tomi, I don't know what could happen.
I want to raise awareness about this issue, because many families are going through this same situation," she added. The law that Justina Lo Cane's family achieved establishes that anyone over 18 years of age
is an organ and tissue donor
, unless they expressly express this. Contrary to this rule, minors require authorization from one of the parents or legal representative.
Tomás with his mother, Soledad, who asks for help to transplant her son.
"When a father loses a child, at that moment he does not think about whether he can donate the organs, that is why it is important to make the issue visible. Organs do not go to heaven. One donor can save up to seven lives. From "Before Tomi was put on the waiting list, I tried to spread the word about the topic a lot, because you never know when you're going to need an organ," he said.
During all these months of waiting, Tomi only had one transplant operation four months ago.
The donor was a boy from Córdoba, and he was very compatible with him.
“He was in position three for a candidate, but in the end they advanced with position two because he was a boy from Córdoba, due to a logistical issue,” he said.
According to Incucai, currently
183 pediatric patients are waiting for an organ transplant
.
During 2023, 4,264 patients on the waiting list received a transplant, of which 2,143 were organs and 2,121 were corneas.
It should be noted that among the patients who received a transplant last year, 331 were pediatric.
On her Instagram profile (@holalola_blog), Soledad tries to make visible and raise awareness about organ donation and tells about her day-to-day life with Tomi and her other daughter, Juana.
“I feel that I have the mission of being able to communicate about this, not only for my son, but for all the children who go through this situation and continue waiting for a donor.
This topic has to stop being taboo,” he remarked.
Soledad had her two children through treatments.
When she lived in Costa Rica, she began to dream of starting a family and decided to undergo
assisted fertilization
.
She returned to Argentina and Juana was born.
A few years later, through the same procedure, she had Tomi in 2021.
The mother who seeks to raise awareness about organ donation, with her two children.
"Since pregnancy, Tomi began to have some problems. First, the nuchal translucency ultrasound showed that she had a mega bladder. Instead of the pee going to the amniotic fluid, it returned to the kidneys and that caused one to become polycystic. and another dilated. When he was born, it took him a minute to cry and when they took him to neo they realized that he had anorectal malformation," he explained.
“Tomi is a warrior, he is the one who gives you strength to continue.
He is a boy with a lot of personality.
He is super given, cheerful and happy.
He has a nice life, but as I said, we want him to have a life more like a child his age, who can be playing and not have to live in hospitals,” she said, hopefully, at the end.
P.S.