FREEDOM — Aidan’s dad had to make one last decision for his son, and it was a tough one.
“There’s no doubt, if he were here, he would have made the same decisions, because he was very giving,” Clint Nabor said by webcast Thursday, his voice full of emotion.
Nabor was in the midst of his first virtual “meeting” with 15-year-old Mackenzie Schnettler, of Brazoria, Texas. Mackenzie received a corneal donation from Nabor’s 11-year-old son after he died in June.
“It’s sad, because we miss Aidan, but we’re happy knowing that even not being here physically, he’s still able to help, because that’s how he was. He was just super generous,” Nabor said.
“I’m excited that I was the one that was able to carry on Aidan,” Mackenzie said, with several careful pauses between her words.
In September, Mackenzie’s cornea had been eaten away after she, at the time 14, contracted a water-borne bacterial infection doctors have linked to her contact lens solution. She was misdiagnosed several times as having a “pink eye” infection before receiving a more serious diagnosis. Within four days, she had completely lost vision in her left eye and was later told by an eye specialist that she had been within hours of losing the eye altogether.
“The day after surgery, at my post op, my vision was 20/60, before the transplant, I was at 20/400,” Mackenzie wrote in a letter to Nabor in July. “This past weekend, I was able to see my mom’s facial features for the first time in 10 months!”
Mackenzie’s transplant surgery came just four days before her birthday, and she has since obtained her driving learner’s permit. She described herself Thursday as interested in making crafts and playing the piano. Her mother added that Mackenzie was very artistic and liked to play jokes.
“She was a trooper, she never let it get her down,” said Mackenzie’s mom Tiffany Warlick, who sat in on the meeting Thursday. “Her spirits stayed the same. She is still as happy as she could be, as much pain as she was in. She dealt with it a lot better than I would. I mean, they went after her eye with scalpels and she’s gotten injections in it. It was hard to watch.”
On Tuesday, during a checkup with her doctor, Mackenzie had four stitches removed from her eye and her vision has improved beyond what it had been before the infection, Warlick said.
“Thank you so much for her gift of vision,” Warlick said.
In an interview after his meetup with Mackenzie, Nabor said that when he received the Texas teen’s letter, he “could tell it was from the heart.” Nabor said he had received a few details about some of his son’s other donor recipients, but had not spoken to them directly — both sides of the equation need to want to speak in order to be connected. Aidan’s kidneys and skin cells were shared with others, and his liver was being used for medical study. Donating Aidan’s organs, once the family knew the boy’s physical body was unable to continue living, means “a part of him still was in this world,” said Nabor, who is an organ donor himself.
Mackenzie and Nabor’s meeting was facilitated by CorneaGen, the organization that assessed and prepared Aidan’s corneal tissue to be transplanted and arranged for it to be delivered to Mackenzie’s surgeon. Donor Network West partnered with CorneaGen, recovering and delivering the tissue.
“If they want to reach out to me and my family and they want to know about Aidan, then that’s truly all we want to do,” Nabor said. “We want to be able to share the memories of him so then, that way his memory can continue to live on, and not just through us, but also through the people whose lives he is able to gift and effect.”
Aidan, who died while playing outside when he was entangled with a rope swing, was a gifted piano player who loved music, had recently joined the Boy Scouts, took taekwondo lessons and was a “very giving person,” his father said. He shared a story of how his son donated his saved-up allowance to his taekwondo instructor when he heard that coronavirus-related closure mandates were affecting his business.
“He went into his piggy bank and he gave his master $600, because it’s what he had in there,” Nabor said. “He was like here, I hope you don’t have to close.”
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