TORONTO -- The surgery for a three-year-old boy awaiting a life-saving liver transplant is back on schedule after COVID-19 threatened to postpone the operation, according to his father.
“Everyone remains hopeful on both sides and the team at Toronto General are optimistic that we will be able to move forward as planned,” Travis O’Rourke told CTV News Toronto in an email Friday.
Travis’ son Max has biliary atresia, a rare condition that his father says causes his liver challenges.
“Outside of a very distended belly ...you wouldn’t know,” Travis said. “He’s a happy kid, he laughs, and he brings joy everywhere.”
Travis said that Max is in the hospital for “about three months of the year” for treatment of his condition. “Our family moves into SickKids and they give him great treatment for about a month and then we get discharged and cross our fingers until the next time.”
In January, Max’s condition took a turn for the worse.
“We always kind of thought transplant would be the end of the road, but we tried to prolong that as much as we could. In January, unfortunately we had a setback which landed Max on the transplant list at SickKids and we’ve been crossing our fingers since then.”
Travis said on Thursday that Max’s surgery was scheduled for April 16, but due to the changing healthcare landscape in Ontario and across the country in response to COVID-19, he was unsure if that timeline would be thrown into jeopardy.
But in a positive turn of events, Travis said that doctors at Toronto General Hospital contacted him to reassure him of Max’s transplant timeline.
“Essentially after your story ran I was contacted by the Living Donor department at Toronto General who advised me that nothing is official it’s just everything is changing on a day-to-day basis and it is inaccurate to say that it has been cancelled,” Travis said.
Travis went on to say how happy he was that Toronto General Hospital contacted him regarding Max’s situation.
