A 15-YEAR-OLD boy has become the 100th child in Scotland to receive a kidney from a living donor.
Stephen Gallacher received the organ from his mother Cheryl, who described him as a “wee warrior”, in a transplant operation lasting more than four hours at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children on Wednesday.
Stephen, from Musselburgh in East Lothian, who became ill shortly after he was born, declared ahead of the procedure: “I’m grateful for this. I’ve been waiting since I was five weeks old.”
The teenager was born with a blockage near his bladder which resulted in severe kidney disease. Although he had not yet needed dialysis, he has been on medication ever since the diagnosis and the illness has hampered his ability to live life to the full.
Since 2015, surgeons had been preparing to give Stephen a kidney transplant and tests were carried out on both his mother and father Tommy, 53, to determine who would make the best donor for what is known as the living related donor (LRD) procedure.
The operation coincidentally sees Stephen become the 250th child in Scotland to receive a kidney transplant from any donor, living or deceased.
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