My Grandchild’s Kidney Transplant Story: Harlow Tucker
“If you had just one wish…” Before the question was finished, Harlow Tucker was ready with the answer: “To be a normal kid.”
Her angelic smile and quiet charm can make you forget for a moment that she has been in and out of hospitals since she was only two weeks old.
Harlow is a bright 14-year-old girl from Connecticut. She’s very cute, a little shy, and lights up when she talks about Taylor Swift. She was born with a single, partially functioning kidney due to a condition called Branchio-oto-renal (BOR) syndrome. Doctors said her kidney would eventually fail altogether, and sure enough, at age six, it began to shut down.
A crisis was unfolding, and little Harlow needed a miracle.
All prayers are answered, and so were the prayers for Harlow. But when the answer came, it was bittersweet.
Heartbreaking news arrived that Harlow’s older cousin, David, had just died in a motorcycle crash. Amid the tragedy and sorrow, Harlow was granted her miracle! The generosity of David’s family and a successful kidney transplant allowed Harlow to resume a relatively normal life for the next seven years.
In August 2022, the transplanted kidney began to fail, and she was hospitalized once again. This time, there were no miracles. So Harlow underwent surgery to have a port implanted in her chest, allowing a tube to connect her to a dialysis machine for four hours a day, three days a week.
Then, disaster struck: Harlow had a heart attack during one of her first dialysis sessions. An embolism had suddenly developed, traveled through a blood vessel, and lodged in her heart. She was rushed from the dialysis unit to the operating room for emergency open-heart surgery.
Incredibly, only a few days later she experienced another embolism and another emergency surgery to clear it from blocking her dialysis port. Still fragile and recovering, she developed sepsis, a life-threatening infection that sent her to emergency surgery once again. After four surgeries and over a month in the hospital, she was finally able to come home to her family and her beloved “Baby Cat.”
Harlow enjoys school and loves spending time with her friends. In 2023, her dialysis schedule was reduced to just Mondays and Fridays and she was excited about another day at school and less homework for those missed days.
On top of all the health challenges, the ongoing dialysis sessions, and all the school she’d missed, Harlow is also partially deaf (also due to BOR syndrome), so she wears hearing aids to compensate. But despite everything she was going through, Harlow made the honor roll that year.
The family’s search for a living kidney donor got a boost in March 2023, when a reporter from WFSB-TV in Hartford contacted Harlow’s grandmother, Lisa Tucker. He had seen Lisa’s public appeal for a living donor on Facebook and wanted to do a story about Harlow. Soon, Lisa and Harlow’s father, Kirk, were on the air, telling Harlow’s story to 101,600 “TV households” in the Hartford metro.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Michelle Allen from Queensland, Australia has just unexpectedly lost a close friend to an aggressive disease, which inspired her to look for ways to make a difference. She discovered the National Kidney Registry’s Voucher Program, an innovative solution to the problem of matching donors to patients. With the Voucher Program, blood type and even the distance between donor and recipient are no longer the obstacles they once were. Donors can give a “directed” voucher to a person of their choice, even if they are not a medical match. That sets into motion a process whereby at least two patients get transplants instead of just one. An “undirected” voucher simply goes to someone on a very long waiting list.
Since Australia had no such program, Michelle registered with the NKR and was accepted as a donor candidate. So she got on an airplane, came halfway around the world, to a place she’d never been, to save the life of someone she didn’t know. That place was Hartford Healthcare Center in Hartford, Connecticut.
It was through the hospital’s “Living Donor Support Group” on Facebook that she happened to meet the Tucker Family. They exchanged text messages for a couple of months, and then on September 9, 2023, Michelle told the family that she had decided to give a directed kidney voucher to Harlow. The news brought the whole family to tears. What a relief!
But Harlow’s story was about to get even more complicated. Two days after learning Michelle was going to be Harlow’s voucher donor, Lisa visited the transplant office to meet Harlow’s new social worker. She had only been in the room for a few minutes when in walked the transplant coordinator. Lisa was totally unprepared for what she was about to hear.
“A donor came forward in May after seeing Harlow’s story on the local TV news,” she said. Since the donor had chosen to remain anonymous, she couldn’t tell Lisa much, but what she could say was that he was local and that he was “such a near-perfect medical match, he could have been her father!”
It was truly a painful dilemma for the family. Michelle had traveled so far and given them so much. They told her about this unexpected development, hoping she would understand. Not only did Michelle understand, but she gave the directed voucher to Harlow anyway.
On September 18, 2023, Michelle underwent surgery at HHC to have her kidney harvested, generating a voucher for Harlow. Should Harlow need another transplant, Michelle’s voucher is redeemable for a lifetime.
November 15, 2023: Today is the day that we have been praying for, hoping for, wishing for. Today our granddaughter, Harlow has her second kidney transplant.
November 15, 2023: Today is the day that we have been praying for, hoping for, wishing for. Today our granddaughter, Harlow has her second kidney transplant.
Lisa Tucker
Harlow went into surgery at 9:00 that morning. At 2:30 that afternoon, the surgeon came into the waiting room and told her family that the transplant had been a complete success! The doctor said that within minutes of connecting the donor’s kidney, it started producing urine.
Three days post-op, Lisa posted this update to friends and family: “Her new kidney is working great, and she gets a little stronger every day. She has even been up walking even though she is still in some pain. But she is smiling and joking and talking about getting out of there!”
But recovery from transplant surgery is a marathon, not a sprint. In the six months after surgery, there were challenges and setbacks, but there were victories, too. Harlow recently celebrated the first anniversary of her transplant, sailing through her first annual check-up with flying colors. Today, she is back in school with her friends—happy, healthy, strong, and enjoying her life as “a normal kid.”
All this is a clear reminder that “It takes a village.” To Michelle, who gave her kidney, then stole our hearts; to the anonymous donor who selflessly gave Harlow the gift of life; to the miracle workers at HHC; and to everyone in “the village” who have offered your prayers, cheers and support since she was a little girl with big dreams—love and a heartfelt “Thank You!” from Harlow and her eternally grateful family!