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13-year-old with rare disease gets kidney transplant
Aaron Mesmer reports
PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. - A Pinellas County girl is recovering after receiving a life-saving organ transplant more than a year after she was diagnosed with an extremely rare kidney disease.
Doctors at Tampa General Hospital conducted the surgery on Natalie Warner, 13, on Tuesday night, just hours after notifying her family that a new kidney was available.
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"It was pure excitement," Natalie's father, David Warner, said. "Then kind of anxiety kicked in and nerves kicked in, like, oh, my God, it's happening. What do we got to do? She's the strongest girl I know, and she's beating this thing one day at a time."
Natalie was diagnosed in late 2022 with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis or FSGS. It's a disease that affects just seven in 1 million people worldwide, and it caused her kidneys to fail.
She was hospitalized in early 2023 due to spikes in her blood pressure that led to a series of seizures.
Dialysis and medication stabilized her health, but she desperately needed the transplant she received this week. Her father told FOX 13 that the new organ immediately started working properly.
"Once they attached it to the bladder, it started producing and started working and started producing urine, which is a great sign," he said.
David Warner has become somewhat of an expert on FSGS; his battle with the same disease made headlines when he was a baseball player for Clearwater High School. He received a new kidney in 2007.
"This is a second chance at life, the second chance of life being normal," he said. "I know she's extremely happy with getting this because it's been one step closer for her to being back on the softball field with her best friends and being in school and just being a normal kid."
Natalie's family hopes she's released from the hospital next week. Her recovery is expected to take at least a month.