Mom gives infant son The Gift of Life

Michelle Walker, left, donated a portion of her own liver to her son, Brevyn, right, to survive a fight with a rare cancer.

photo provided

Michelle Walker returned home Friday after successfully helping her five-month-old son Brevyn recover from a fight with a rare form of liver cancer. The infant is the grandson of John and Debbie Fisher of Dexter.

Michelle Walker donated a portion of her own liver to Brevyn on Feb. 1, following a local pediatrician's discovery of a mass on the boy's liver.

"We're lucky we caught it before it spread," said Walker, a registered nurse, who played a key factor in the early detection of the fatal disease.

In November, Michelle was carrying her then six-week-old child as she exited her vehicle. She tripped on a curb, she recalled, and dropped the car seat he was strapped in a short distance to the ground.

She took her son to the emergency room and it was determined that there was no trauma associated with the accident.

That evening, Brevyn vomited and his mother became concerned again. She made an appointment to see his pediatrician, Dr. Joseph Fernando of Northwest Medical Center, as a precaution .

Unrelated to the fall, a mass was

discovered over Brevyn's liver and, upon running a series of tests, Fernando suspected it might be a tumor.

"The cancer hadn't spread outside of the tissue," Fernando said. "That really increased his survival rate."

Fernando admitted Brevyn to Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center, and he was soon transported to St. Louis Children's Hospital where he was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma. The rare form of liver cancer that appears in young children and is sometimes formed in the uterus, is seen less than five times a year at Children's Hospital, according to officials.

In receiving chemotherapy in a series of three-week cycles in order to shrink the tumor, Brevyn became eligible to be placed on the cataveric donor list upon completion of the second round of treatment.

A week later, there were no matches with the same blood type so Brevyn was given one final cycle of chemotherapy. When no cataveric donors were available again during the short window when the baby's blood count was up, Brevyn's father, John Walker, grandmother, Pauletta Walker, and his mother were each tested to be live donors.

As it turned out, Michelle was determined to have the closest anatomical match to her son, although doctors did not recommend the ordeal of going through the procedure for the postpartum mother.

In the end, Michelle's surgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Lowell, determined it would be all right since livers regenerate and she was young, healthy and willing. A transplant team cut out 25 percent of Michelle's liver in Barnes Jewish Hospital. The organ was then transferred to Children's Hospital and inserted in Brevyn's body.

"She basically gave him life again," said Heidi Suppelsa, media relations manager for Children's Hospital.

The mother was discharged in a week and returned to Children's Hospital to help take care of her baby. She eventually checked in at a nearby hotel with her son and stepmother Debbie Fisher, as Brevyn was on about a dozen anti-rejection medications, and Michelle had to make biweekly visits to the hospital.

"His pathology report came back saying that they cured all his cancer," Michelle said upon returning to Ellsinore.

"As long as everything stays OK after a year of [CAT scans], and doctors expect it to, they won't need to conduct testing anymore.

"We're very happy to be home. Yes we are," the mother said in baby talk, to Brevyn's laugh.