By 2016, Kayla Billington already had five years experience working as a pediatric nurse under her belt. So, when a little boy named Patrick walked into the hospital in Uganda where she was volunteering, Kayla not only knew something was wrong, she had a good idea of what it was.
“I’m looking at this fingernails and I’m looking at his face and I’m like, ‘Wow, that boy looks like he has a heart defect,’” Kayla said.
It was a hunch that not only proved to be correct but would also launch Kayla, now a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center, on an emotional, life-changing journey that has the potential to help many Ugandan children with similar ailments.
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Patrick was the name of the boy she saw in the Ugandan hospital. Kayla asked the local doctors for an echocardiogram to test her hypothesis but was told access to an echocardiogram was limited and expensive by Ugandan standards. Kayla offered to pay the $30 for the scan.
The echo proved Kayla's theory correct: Patrick had Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare condition that is the result of a combination of four heart defects that are present at birth. Kayla had never seen a child as old as Patrick with the condition. In the United States, Tetralogy of Fallot is usually corrected with surgery within a child’s first six months of life.
What was even worse news for Kayla was learning that there was no option locally for repairing Patrick’s heart.
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“Man, I was devastated," Kayla said. "I couldn't sleep after that. I would see Patrick every day after that and just think like, 'There's no way I could just let this kid die without at least trying to do something for him.’”
It turns out Kayla had formed a strong emotional attachment to Patrick.
“I have never in my life had a relationship like I had with Patrick," Kayla said. "When I say we were thick as thieves, we were inseparable. I was sleeping in an on-call room in the hospital. He would just come in my room and sleep next to me.”
For the next 11 months, Kayla was on a nonstop mission to find a way to get Patrick the surgery that would save his life. She reached out to hundreds of hospitals in the United States looking for one that would donate the surgery, finally finding one in Kentucky. Then, there were months of bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining a passport and visa for Patrick. At one point, the pair were about to board a flight when they were stopped.
“They accused me of trying to traffic him out of the country, so then we had to go to court and get more paperwork done,” Kayla said.
Kayla and Patrick arrived in Kentucky only to learn that his condition had deteriorated to the point he would not survive the surgery to repair his heart. Three days later, Patrick died in Kayla’s arms. It was then she made a promise to him.
“One, I was going to take care of his family, and two, I was going to make sure his life had meaning and people were going to know how much he changed my life and that he was going to continue to change lives,” Kayla said.
Paty’s Project is how Kayla is delivering on that promise. It’s a nonprofit through which Kayla raises money to pay for life-saving surgeries for Ugandan children with heart defects, like Patrick. Kayla has found a hospital in India that will do the surgeries, costing roughly $10,000, including transportation and housing.
So far, Kayla has arranged three surgeries for Ugandan children with two more identified as the next recipients.
The first of the children Kayla was able to help turned out to be Patrick’s younger sister, Gift.
“She had surgery, she did amazing and she is now almost five years old doing swimmingly in Uganda," Kayla said. “It just brings me incredible joy to know these kids now have one less thing, one less obstacle in their life and can go to school for the first time and can run around without getting winded and really have a fair shot of living."
