Boy Who Can't Eat Chips Offered Hope By Kidney Donor Gran

Boy Who Can't Eat Chips Offered Hope By Kidney Donor Gran

Source: SWNS

A four-year-old boy who is only allowed to eat one chip per month is set to have his life transformed by a 48-year-old kidney - donated by his Grandma.

Stevie Plavecz-Maples has a chronic kidney disease which leaves his body unable to process the potassium in potatoes.

It means he can never tuck into his favourite food - except for once a month when he is allowed to savour one solitary chip as a treat.

Doctors have said a kidney transplant could completely transform the rest of his life - so his whole family have jumped to his aid.

On average donor kidneys last up to 15 years, so Stevie's doting parents Gemma Plavecz, 28, and John Maples, 31, want to wait and donate when he needs them later in life.

Instead Stevie's loving grandmother Tracy Plavecz, 48, will donate one of her kidneys - freeing Stevie from his daily dialysis sessions in time for his first day at school in September.

It means he will grow up with a kidney which is 12 times older than he is.

Brave Stevie said: "I can't wait to have my nan's kidney. I am going to have a bath and eat chips. I am going to eat a lot of chips."

Devoted grandmother Tracy said there was no decision to make when medics discovered she was a match - because she wants to give Stevie a "normal childhood".

She said: "I'm not thinking about myself, I'm doing it for him. Every child deserves to have a happy, free childhood and I want that more than anything for Stevie.

"He is such a happy child you would never know how ill he is. It will completely change his life and make us all so happy."

Stevie - who lives with his nursery assistant mum Gemma, plumber dad John, 31, and older brother JJ, 6 - was not feeding properly when he was born and he developed a urine infection, which lead to chronic kidney disease.

An ultrasound scan showed his kidneys were very small and the blocked urethral valve had damaged one of his kidneys beyond repair.

He survives on just one under-developed kidney and has to be hooked up to a dialysis machine for 10 hours, six nights a week.

Last January Stevie had a kidney transplant at Nottingham Hospital, but the organ only lasted for two days as a blot clot formed and the kidney could not get any blood.

Doctors plan to give him drugs to thin his blood after the next transplant operation to prevent the new kidney from failing.

Close