"Hurry up, please.”
Like most busy New York City 5-year-olds, Kinsey Saleh is in a rush.
Instead of playing outside with her friends after school, the spunky kindergartner is hooked up to a dialysis machine three long afternoons a week to stay alive. She is in end-stage kidney failure — a rare disease for a little kid — and needs a transplant ASAP.
“Hurry up, please, and give me a kidney,” little Kinsey said she would like to tell New Yorkers when the Daily News visited with her in her family’s Queens apartment last week.
Playing doctor with her stuffed animals, Spikey and Stuffy, she added, “I miss eating pizza and vanilla ice cream.”
Kinsey’s mom, Nadine Morsi, 38, said their lives were suddenly upended in January, when the deadly diagnosis came out of the blue.
Kinsey had been a perfectly healthy, active girl, who loved going to the park and playing with her friends from Public School 188 in Hollis Hills.
In December, Morsi noticed that her only child was unusually fatigued, getting winded just running from their garden apartment door to the curb. She also easily bruised and was complaining of joint pain.
“The pediatrician was shocked when her blood test results came back,” said Morsi, a pediatric occupational therapist for the city Education Department who is divorced and raising her daughter alone. “He said, ‘You need to get your daughter to the emergency room immediately. She is in kidney failure.’ I was like, ‘WHAT?’ ”
Kinsey’s condition was so dire, doctors told Morsi her daughter was in danger of suffering a stroke or cardiac arrest from her high potassium levels.
“It was a nightmare,” said a distraught Morsi.
During her hair-raising two-week January stay at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, Kinsey underwent four surgeries, suffered a seizure and had to have several transfusions.
But through all that, the pint-size pistol survived, amazing her medical team and family.
“She is superadorable, definitely a spitfire who will make you laugh,” said Dr. Christine Sethna, chief pediatric nephrologist at the Long Island hospital.
Sethna said end-stage kidney failure in children is rare — only 15 cases in 1 million U.S. children are seen each year — and the majority of kids inherit it.
Kinsey was not born with the disease, and so the cause of her renal disease is a mystery.
She is now on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, along with 72 other children in New York State, including 19 at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where transplant surgeons are following her.
In a cruel twist, Kinsey’s mom was a perfect match, but was not able to donate because surgery would have put her own health at risk due to a congenital clotting disorder.
And her dad — with a history of kidney stones — was also ineligible.
Dr. Scott Ames, the Mount Sinai surgeon who will likely perform Kinsey’s transplant, said time is of the essence because children fare much better the less time they are on dialysis. The 38-pound girl is already small for her age.
“I can’t imagine something harder than to have a 5-year-old child you are not able to help by giving them one of your organs,” said Ames. “So far, there might be two or three people who could be compatible, but a lot more testing needs to be done.
“Kinsey has a joie de vivre. And she’s got a lot of courage,” said Ames.
Asked whether all the doctors’ and nurses’ poking and prodding hurt, the child said, “No. But when they change the (catheter) dressing, I do scream a little.”
Until the right donor comes along — someone who is healthy, older than 18 and has B or O blood — Morsi said, their lives have settled into a “new normal.”
There is the Monday, Wednesday and Friday shlepping to a four-hour dialysis ordeal — which leaves Kinsey exhausted the next day at school. There was learning to give Kinsey a daily injection and teaching her how to swallow six different pills a day. And there’s the emotional roller coaster of waiting for a compatible donor.
Mother is overwhelmed. Daughter takes it all in stride, except the bland no-salt, no-milk diet.
The two are inseparable, even sleeping side by side.
“I find myself putting my finger under her nose during the night to make sure she is not bleeding, and she’s breathing,” said Morsi.
The support from nearby family, as well as close friends, is what helps keep them afloat.
Childhood chums of Morsi from Jackson Heights helped launch a Facebook page and fund-raising drive for the mounting medical bills.
And another friend reached out to The News to publicize Kinsey’s case and make a public plea for organ donors.
“When a disaster strikes, you see how much love there is,” said Morsi, breaking down in tears, as her little girl belted out “Let It Go” by Idina Menzel, her favorite song from the Disney movie “Frozen,” from her pink bedroom.
And as for the several strangers who have inquired about being a donor for Kinsey, “They restore your faith in humanity.”
Sunday morning, Kinsey asked her mom a gut-wrenching question.
“Mom, when are my kidneys not going to be broken anymore?” she asked.
Morsi responded: “When our hero arrives. Soon.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Wednesday, April 2nd 2014 at 5:12PM
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