HOUSTON — Jailyn is a “typical” 9-year-old. She loves to dance, watch TikTok videos, and cook.
“She is so spunky and very spontaneous.”
Jailyn lives with a birth defect called gastroschisis – a condition where a hole next to the belly button enables a baby’s intestines to grow outside the body.
Since birth, Jailyn had been on the donor list at a hospital in Pittsburgh for a small bowel transplant, but she missed at least two opportunities to get the life-saving operation.
Dyshica Bradley heard about Jailyn’s plight at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital.
“The nurses told me no one ever comes to visit her," Bradley said. “They said Jailyn would get dropped off at the ER and stay for weeks at a time by herself.”
When Jailyn was 3 years old and in the foster care system, Bradley – who had fostered and adopted other children with complicated medical needs – adopted her.
Because organ recipients often need to get to the hospital within hours of one becoming available, Bradley began paying for medical flight insurance to help cover the cost of booking last-minute flights.
But after years of paying, she found out the company didn’t pay for flights to Pittsburgh.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was one of a handful of hospitals that offered the surgery Jailyn needs.
“I had never had a glimpse of losing hope, but it was just snatched from under us when I found that out,” Bradley said.
When Jailyn got sick in February 2022, doctors switched her to the kidney transplant list.
“The kidney would buy us time," Bradley said
In November, a social worker at UPMC saw an email from the charity AeroAngel offering services for children who were too sick to fly on a commercial flight but didn’t need an air ambulance.
Mark Pestal founded the organization in 2010 and said it’s a network of jet donors and professional pilots who volunteer their time.
“There was no other group in the country with the model we’re using,” Pestal, a pilot himself, said.
Pestal said when he connected with Bradley, he told her the organization had never done a transplant flight before.
“We basically said to the hospital in Pittsburgh, ‘We’ll take a shot at this, and hopefully it will come together,’” Pestal said.
Just few weeks later, while throwing a Christmas party for her kids, Bradley got the call: A kidney was available for Jailyn.
Within hours, an anonymous donor sent a plane from Pittsburgh to pick them up from Houston Executive Airport.
“We went to the airport, they put us on the jet, and there was a car service set up when we landed – it was very smooth," Bradley said.
Thankfully, the operation went just as smoothly and weeks later, Jailyn was able to fly home.
She is still in need of a small bowel transplant, but while Bradley works to get her back on the donor list, a new kidney is helping Jailyn get back to being a typical kid.
Bradley has set up a GoFundMe to help raise money for Jailyn's medical costs.