WATCH ABOVE: Taylum Lamoureux has a shot at a normal life thanks to a stranger from Niagara Falls. Mark Carcasole reports.
TORONTO — Taylum Lamoureux doesn’t know how happy he’s made a family he barely even knows, and how much hope he’s given his own.
It’s been three weeks since the two-year-old Sudbury boy underwent a kidney transplant at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, but you wouldn’t know it watching him bound around his room at Ronald McDonald House. One minute he’s transfixed by the Thomas the Tank Engine episode on television, the next he’s playing a kazoo while bashing away at a toy drum set.
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It’s amazing when you consider doctors originally didn’t think Taylum would live longer than a week. But 11 surgeries later, he’s got a second chance at a normal life.
“We’ve been praying for this for so long,” says Taylum’s mother Desiree, who by this point has finally managed to corral him beside her on the couch.
“To know there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel, it almost doesn’t compute right.”
Taylum was born with kidney failure caused by autosomal recessive polycystic kidney. He’s had to undergo regular dialysis throughout his young life as he waited to grow big enough for an adult kidney transplant.
Like many who’ve gone public with their pleas recently, the Lamoureuxs took to social media; launching the Facebook page “A Tribe For Taylum.”
The family received messages of support from all over the world and sales of temporary tattoos reading “I’m in Taylum’s tribe” sold well enough to raise $10,000 for Ronald McDonald House, with enough left to buy a backyard playset for Taylum when the family returns home to Sudbury.
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The “light” that made that a real possibility came from a total stranger in Niagara Falls.
“I sent a private message to the mother and said ‘hey, I might be able to speed this up,'” said Michelle MacKinnon.
MacKinnon remembers seeing the family’s plea on a mutual friend’s Facebook page. In 2011 her son David died at the age of 18, on the day Michelle was scheduled to donate her kidney to him.
Reading of the Lamoureuxs’ plight, she decided helping Taylum was a way to honour her own son, save a life and “finish what I started.”
“It was like an instinct, like a gut feeling,” recalls Desiree Lamoureux about reading MacKinnon’s message.”I just had such a good feeling, strong feeling about her.”
The operation has created a lifelong bond between the two families.
“I wish there was a way I could really thank Michelle,” says Desiree smiling.”I feel like there’s nothing I could say.”
The Lamoreuxs hope to bring Taylum home in August, but right now he still needs almost daily hospital treatments and close monitoring of the transplant. He has his ups and downs.
The scars on Taylum’s belly will always be there but the family says they will serve as a reminder of all he has overcome.
“He’s battling this life-threatening disease that he wasn’t supposed to survive from, so he’s a warrior,” says Desiree as Taylum tosses a green toy into the air with a laugh.
“He’s my ‘peaceful warrior’ because he’s just a little sweetheart.”
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