Children from all over the state come to the hospital several times each week to have their blood purified through special tiny tubes under the watchful eye of highly-trained nurses. During the four-hour sessions, they can catch up on their schoolwork with the help of Mott Hospital's education staff, or engage in art therapy. Others, whose kidneys need help through a crisis, get dialysis at their bedside or continuous renal replacement therapy 24 hours a day in the intensive care units. Still others receive monthly help with at-home peritoneal dialysis. Most patients' stories have a happy ending, with a kidney transplant in Mott Hospital's pediatric operating rooms.
Patients are as young as one month with the average transplant recipient being six months.
In addition to liver transplant, Mott Hospital offers a full range of other pediatric transplant services including kidney, heart, heart-lung, pancreas, bone marrow and cornea grafting. Mott Hospital is recognized internationally for its success in performing heart transplants. Ask any staff member and you'll hear that Mott Hospital is a very special place to work because of the people, patients and families. The Mott Service Awards are one way that the U-M Health System applauds employees who go above and beyond the call of duty to serve children and their families. The 2000 Mott Service Award winners were Kathy Badgerow, a pediatric unit host, and Sandra Merkel, a clinical nurse specialist with the Pediatric Pain Service.