This month, many of us are celebrating a mother’s love.

What better present can a mom give her child than the gift of life? One Texas woman did so twice.

Eileen Macias was 20 weeks pregnant when an ultrasound to learn her baby’s gender also revealed that her unborn son had an enlarged bladder. Diagnosed with a rare urinary birth defect called Prune Belly Syndrome, Brixton Marshall underwent his first of many surgeries while still in the womb.

As Brixton grew, his lungs developed but his kidneys did not, so at age 1, he began dialysis. He was placed on the kidney transplant list, but after complications with dialysis, the need for a new organ increased.

Many are not aware that adult organs can be transplanted into pediatric patients if there is not a significant size difference. And luckily, there was a close match in Brixton’s family.

On May 12, 2020, two days after Mother’s Day, Eileen gave a special gift to her son at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth: a new kidney.

Surgeons on staff at Texas Health Fort Worth removed one of Eileen’s kidneys, and then a team at Cook Children’s Medical Center transplanted the organ into Brixton. Just hours after her own surgery, Eileen crossed the skybridge connecting the two hospitals to visit her son in Cook’s ICU.

“I was overjoyed,” Eileen recalled of the moment she reunited with her son. “There were so many people involved in this journey that, at that point in time, I felt all of it. There was so much gratitude and love.”

Brixton is now doing very well at age 5 and is back home in Lubbock with his parents and three siblings.

“What wouldn’t we give our kids as parents?” Eileen asked. “Every person on that (transplant waiting) list is a child, is a son, is a daughter, is a father, is a brother. They’re all somebody like that to somebody else. If you would do it for your own kid, I would hope you would consider doing it for somebody else.”

Since the Kidney Transplant Program began in 1986 at Texas Health Fort Worth, surgeons have completed 1,210 procedures. Of those, 153 involved living donors — three of which were collaborations with patients from Cook’s. 

More than 100,000 people in the United States are currently awaiting a kidney transplant. Follow this link to learn more about becoming a live kidney donor.