Columbia Girl Travels To Minnesota for Life-Saving Transplant

A Columbia family is on a long journey to find a 12-year-old girl a life-saving pancreas transplant.

Children receiving a pancreas is rare in itself with only 4 successfully done in the U.S., but for Emmy, her need is for a completely different reason.

The Reeves family, like many families in the summer, are taking a trip- hoping to create a “Summer of Memories.” Except, this one will end in Minneapolis where 12-year-old Emmy Reeves will hopefully receive a pancreas transplant to save her life.

“There’s not a lot of doctors in the United States that do pediatric pancreas transplants for type 1 diabetics. There are pancreas transplants for children with pancreatitis, but for a type 1, the last one they did was in 1998. And that doctor is the most experienced in doing it,” Jack Reeves, Emmy’s dad said.

Emmy was just 4 years old when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. For a child so young, her journey navigating the new diagnosis was going to be different, but for Emmy, it was even more complicated when she had an allergic reaction to the insulin used to control her blood sugar levels.

“That immediately is when we knew that something’s different. Emmy is going to be a rare case and it’s going to be an interesting journey through her Type 1 Diabetes,” Reeves said.

Now, Emmy is 12 and has learned how to live with her Type 1 Diabetes, but with the insulin allergy, she’s experienced complications associated with out of control Type 1 Diabetes. Symptoms which could lead to blindness, or organ failure.

“She’s losing feeling in her fingertips and her feet. And along with other… besides the allergy. So, let’s get her a kind of a cure… because a pancreas transplant is not a cure. But it will reduce her or completely eliminate her need for insulin,” Reeves said.

Emmy is waiting for a donor, but because her case is so rare doctors believe she will only need to wait a week or two in Minneapolis. The price of the procedure is expensive though. The estimated cost is $75 thousand, and that’s not including the expense of lodging before and after the surgery. So far, the family has raised a little over $3 thousand.

If you’d like to help the Reeves family pay for medical expenses you can donate online by clicking this link.

Or send a check payable to COTA, with “In Honor of Emmy R” written on the memo line of the check. Send those to:
Children’s Organ Transplant Association
2501 West COTA Drive
Bloomington, Indiana, 47403