Leo’s Odyssey

Leo’s Odyssey This is the story of Leonidas, Biliary Atresia warrior and liver transplant recipient �

First T ball practice! 🥹🥹🥹
04/23/2026

First T ball practice! 🥹🥹🥹

04/11/2026

If you need a reason to believe God is not only real, but He is mighty to save, let Leo’s story be it.

He wasn’t supposed to make it to two years old. In fact, with the severity of his disease, he wouldn’t have made it to his first birthday.

Then God turned ashes into beauty by giving my baby a second chance at life, through liver transplant.

After his transplant, Leo battled a different disease called Graft vs Host. Like a reverse rejection where the new organ’s immune cells tried to kill him. By grace he survived. He is 1 in 5 worldwide. The immune system of his donor is fully intact and alive within Leo and it has a memory of every sickness the donor child experienced. Leo’s immune system and the donor one now coexist and even cooperate to keep him safe! That is a miracle.


Cincinnati Children's

We are all tucked in at Ronald McDonald House, our home away from home! Today was a great success! One poke labs, with t...
04/11/2026

We are all tucked in at Ronald McDonald House, our home away from home!

Today was a great success! One poke labs, with the most stable results we’ve ever had, a smooth ultrasound, and the best visit with Dr. Asai!

The team is super impressed with Leo’s condition 🫶🏼 Praise God for answered prayers and the love and faithfulness he’s shown our family!

Pray for Leo today as he has his annual liver appointment in Cincinnati 🫶🏼 We left home at 5am and have completed labs. ...
04/10/2026

Pray for Leo today as he has his annual liver appointment in Cincinnati 🫶🏼

We left home at 5am and have completed labs. Next step is ultrasound and a visit with our favorite doctor!

Hope in the Kasai Biliary Atresia gives no chances to your child. From the very beginning it seeks to drain livelihood...
04/08/2026

Hope in the Kasai

Biliary Atresia gives no chances to your child. From the very beginning it seeks to drain livelihood and rob them of their future. A child with BA will not live past two years old with their native liver, making the need for medical intervention critical.
Leo was nearly three months old when he underwent his first major operation- the Kasai- a corrective surgery the redirects the flow of bile from the liver directly to the small intestine. During this procedure, he had his gallbladder removed. Doctors explained to us that the chances of a successful Kasai were about 2/3, stating that 1/3 of kids would have a great outcome and not need a transplant until they are much older, another 1/3 would have some success until about 6-10 years old. In the remaining 1/3 the Kasai would fail, expediting the need for transplant.
With high hopes and unceasing prayers for complete healing and success, we kissed our baby and he was taken into the OR. There was no way of knowing, but we had faith that God would be with him. After all, his name-Leonidas (a Greek name meaning “lion hearted”) was chosen with intent. I knew the child in my womb would be a strong one, I just wasn’t sure how yet.
Seeing him in the PICU after the operation was heart wrenching. He had been intubated and was in a lot of pain. Our tiny baby. He was so small in comparison to the adult hospital bed they’d put him on. It all felt so unfair, yet we had to take heart and keep going. We held back tears, and tried to hold onto hope.
In the days that followed, we watched his stool with strange anticipation. One indicator of a successful Kasai is pale stool returning to normal color. He started to have a few normal diapers, and we couldn’t have been more thrilled. This meant we could go home right?! It appeared so! After a week, maybe a couple we were discharged and got to return to Danville, carrying along with us a whole new slew of anxieties and fears. Leo got to spend Halloween at home. At some point in that time frame we had to come to terms with the fact that his Kasai was in fact unsuccessful. It didn’t even last a month. We were in Cincinnati again by mid November.

The Beginning Leonidas was a born on July 27th, 2021. I had a perfect pregnancy and labor experience, and Leo came to us...
01/24/2026

The Beginning

Leonidas was a born on July 27th, 2021. I had a perfect pregnancy and labor experience, and Leo came to us a beautiful healthy baby; 6lb 5oz with a head full of hair. No alarms were raised about his health, as he had passed his hearing screening and all the rest.

We were all in love and felt so complete as a family.

I’m not sure why we didn’t notice the signs at first. The pale stool, the irritability, the persistent jaundice. Our first son, Ilias had jaundice, and as far as I could remember, baby poops were yellowish, so I didn’t worry. Leo was definitely different. His first pediatrician just told us that his jaundice was normal breast feeding jaundice and it would go away. It wasn’t until we went in for our 2 months appointment when a new doctor raised concern. He told us Leo needed labs because he didn’t think that jaundice was normal. He told us about a rare disease called Biliary Atresia. It occurs in 1 in 18000 live births, so it was easy for us to just be in denial. We trusted the Lord for everything to be okay, but He had other plans.

In September, our baby was officially diagnosed with BA and we found ourselves beginning our journey at Cincinnati Children’s. The liver doctors told us that there was a corrective surgery they could perform called a Kasai where they redirect the flow of bile from the liver to the gallbladder, to the small intestine instead. They explained there was about a 1/3 chance of the procedure being so successful that Leo wouldn’t require a liver transplant.

We went through with it.

We began to watch our baby’s incredible journey of suffering unfold before our eyes. Endless pokes, monitors, sleepless nights in a hospital crib, medical starvation (NPO means the patient is not allowed to have anything by mouth), ng tubes, x rays, ultrasounds and more.

The closest we might get is newborn screening for BA 🙏🏼
12/20/2025

The closest we might get is newborn screening for BA 🙏🏼

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Danville, KY

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