JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Most kids around the holidays are thankful for new toys or getting the holidays off school, but three-year-old Hudson Poff has even more to be thankful for this year than the presents underneath the Christmas tree.
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Action News Jax introduced you to Hudson last December when his Christmas wish was a brand-new kidney. This was due to his diagnosis of hemolytic uremic syndrome: a rare condition that attacks the red blood cells in the kidney which made his Christmases far from normal.
Every night at 6:30 p.m., Hudson had to be hooked up to a dialysis machine at home, missing out on many childhood memories that most kids enjoy, especially around the holiday season.
“Everything was, ‘Well we can’t do that, Huddy can’t go’ or ‘We don’t wanna make memories without him,’” Hudson’s mom, Kandi Poff recounted to Action News Jax on Monday.
Hudson is now celebrating his first ever truly normal Christmas this year with his brand new kidney.
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“Even then, look at Halloween. He was able to trick or treat [this year] at night. Before we had to take him trick or treating at 5 o clock, so he could be hooked up at 6:30,” Hudson’s dad Steven Poff told Action News.
Though Hudson is now doing much better, it’s been a long journey to get here, with obstacles remaining ahead due to Hudson being immunocompromised from the medication he’ll have to take the rest of his life now.
“He’ll never be considered 100% healthy,” Kandi Poff explained. “He’ll always have the medicine he has to take so his body doesn’t reject the kidney.”
“There’s still a lot of things he can’t do,” Steven Poff added. “He can’t garden, he can’t… but I would take the things that he can’t do now, and it’s way better with everything he can do now.”
After being granted his Christmas wish of a kidney last year, Hudson now says he wants a dirt bike from Santa this year, as happy and healthy as ever with three new dogs as well – just one of the many things that were once impossible, now part of Hudson’s happy new reality.
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