Elijah Slack doesn’t pull any punches when he’s talking about the care he received before and after his kidney transplant: He’s all about the caregivers at American Family Children’s Hospital.
“I don’t think I had a single nurse or doctor that was bad,” he said.
Coming from a 17-year-old, that’s high praise, indeed—especially when that teenager has been through as much health turmoil as Elijah has over the past year.
His challenges started in November 2023 when he was complaining of eye problems. At the ophthalmologist’s office, he and his mom learned he was in a hypertensive crisis. “That’s how we found out that he had a kidney disease,” said his mom, Tara. “The doctors figured his kidneys were having a hard time keeping up with the function they needed to perform, and that changed into high blood pressure at some point. The high blood pressure was causing his eyes to swell. It turned out that he was running cross country with end-stage kidney disease.”
Elijah was admitted to a hospital, where doctors placed him on hemodialysis. He stayed there 20 days, then returned home to begin an outpatient dialysis regime. “Early on, my husband said, ‘I’ll give him my kidney,’” recalled Tara. “That was my first realization that he was going to need a transplant.”
In December 2023, Elijah’s nephrologist told his parents that they would need to pick a transplant center from one of the three closest facilities: Madison, Milwaukee and Minnesota. Elijah’s dad, Joshua, spent an evening researching the three centers and determined that UW Health in Madison had the best track record.
Elijah and his parents traveled to Madison for an appointment in January and learned he was a good candidate for transplant. There were plenty of people who were willing to be Elijah’s living kidney donor—including both his parents and his three older sisters—but ultimately his mom was the one who gave him the gift of life.
The two underwent their respective surgeries on May 30, 2024. “When I found out I could donate directly to Elijah, there was this elation,” said Tara. “I was expecting the self-fear to hit, and it never did. I did make my husband stay with me in the hotel instead of with Elijah in the hospital the day before the surgery. I was so scared I would want to back out, and I wanted him to talk me out of it. But it never happened.”
Elijah’s and Tara’s surgeries both went well. Just a month after the transplant, Elijah began running again, and by July, he was up to five miles a day. “I asked him every time he came in, ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’” said Tara. “I was trying to follow the eight-week rule for myself—waiting eight weeks before I attempted any kind of strenuous activity.
Elijah is now a senior in high school, and he says he doesn’t even think about his kidney transplant much anymore. “It wasn’t really painful,” he says with a shrug. “There have been worse pains.”