Kidney transplant

When Rashundra Howard became a mom, she never imagined that just a few months later, she’d be facing one of the toughest challenges of her life. Her son, Jashawn, was only 4 months old when she noticed something was off—his eyes and face didn’t look quite right. Trusting her instincts, she took him to the pediatrician, who couldn’t pinpoint the issue but knew it was serious. Within hours, Jashawn was airlifted to Children’s of Alabama, where doctors gave Rashundra a diagnosis that no parent wants to hear: kidney failure.
 
Jashawn was placed on dialysis immediately and admitted to the hospital, where he stayed for the next 405 days. “He was doing dialysis three days a week, and we lived too far away to go home,” Rashundra said. Thankfully, the Ronald McDonald House stepped in, offering them a place to stay during Jashawn’s long hospital stay. “That was a huge help and took a lot of stress off me while he was in treatment,” she added. 
 
In March 2012, when Jashawn was 2, he got a kidney transplant and did well for years. But 10 years later, routine bloodwork showed his transplanted kidney was failing. “Thankfully, his doctor at Children’s caught it early,” Rashundra said. “But it meant we had to start dialysis all over again.”
 
For months, Jashawn underwent dialysis while waiting for a second transplant. Then, in June 2024, the good news finally came—he had a match. He received his second kidney transplant, and since then, he’s been thriving.
 
These days, Jashawn visits Children’s only once a month for checkups, and he’s getting back to being a regular teen. He’s not quite ready to play sports again, but he never misses a game of his favorite team, the Alabama Crimson Tide. And like any teenager, he spends as much time as possible with his friends. “Children’s has been with us through all of this,” Rashundra said. “From his first transplant to now, they’ve done everything they could to help—not just Jashawn, but me, too. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.”