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PLEASANT GROVE — During the first ultrasound, doctors knew there was something wrong with Braeden Marshall's gut.
Part of his intestines never developed because of a condition called intestinal atresia, so he underwent surgery the day after he was born. For the past 15 years, Marshall has been dealing with the complications of missing most of his small intestine, which is required to absorb the nutrients and calories necessary to sustain life.
While Marshall has been using an IV line to send critical nutrients into his body, he is out of useable veins and running out of time. A complicated small intestine transplant is likely the only option left to save his life, so the Children's Organ Transplant Association is working with his family to make the surgery possible. They are holding a fundraising event in Pleasant Grove Saturday.
Braeden still has a place under his shirt where he can plug in for nutrients. If the transplant is successful, his digestive system will be able to support him without help for the first time in his life.
Posted by Braeden's Transplant on Tuesday, September 29, 2015
"When you look at Braeden it doesn't look like he's sick," his mother Kirstin Wilkes said. "But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have this huge underlying issue that he has to deal with every single day, that is a struggle for him to deal with every single day. So in that way, it's been a little bit of a challenge for us to have people understand the idea of a transplant for Braeden isn't just to make his life better, it's to save his life. We can't continue with the (Total Parental Nutrition line) and if he doesn't have the TPN he dies."
At the end of November Braeden will travel to the Lied Transplant Center in Omaha, Nebraska to try one more round of intestinal rehab to see if they can improve his system's function before putting him on the transplant list for a small intestine.
Two weeks away from our first fundraising event, and we're already 1/6 of the way to our goal! A big thanks you to...
Posted by Braeden's Transplant on Sunday, November 1, 2015
Because Braeden has a short gut, his mother said he has to deal with physical the challenges of having a disability. He is much smaller than other teenagers his age and doesn't have as much energy. The lack of nutrition has also caused some developmental delays. Still, Wilkes said Braeden is a funny and insightful teenager who is very optimistic.
"The eating that he does is mostly as a social thing," she said. "It's fun for him and he likes it a lot, but he could eat tons and tons and tons of calories and it doesn't help him. It just goes straight through him so no matter what he eats it doesn't make him gain weight. It doesn't give him the vitamins and minerals that make him grow. It doesn't help his cognitive skills."
The concert and carnival fundraiser held in his honor will start at 3 p.m. at the Old Pleasant Grove Rec Center, located at 65 E. 200 South. The Jagertown concert begins at 7 p.m. and all of the proceeds from the event will support transplant-related expenses, according to COTA.
