The limo was ordered by a community member who saw P.J.’s story on Facebook and wanted to do something to show the Grandinette family that the community was thinking of them.
Sheriff’s office deputies joined a procession that tailed the limo as it drove past Greenon Elementary, where large crowds lined the sidewalks to greet P.J.
Those in the crowd included P.J.’s classmates, friends, teachers and administrators.
“The community has been amazing. Throughout his many hospitalizations, his surgeries, the whole time waiting for a new liver, they have done nothing but support us,” said P.J.’s mother Kimberly Grandinette
“From a random note in the mail, sending dinner to the hospital and at home, watching our youngest child so both dad and I could be at the hospital with P.J., checking on our house, sharing P.J.’s updates from his Facebook page, texts, donating money towards the transplant and medications, Grennon doing a fundraiser for us. Their support has been amazing.”
P.J. went to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in November to receive the liver transplant. He had been on a waiting list since July and had spent most of 2021 in and out of the hospital.
He was born with multiple diseases, including congenital hepatic fibrosis and polycystic kidney disease, that impact his internal organs. He almost died in September as an infection in his liver spread to his gallbladder causing it to go necrotic.
It was a continuation of a series of ongoing liver infections that started in the beginning of 2021. By the fall it was clear that there was not another alternative besides a transplant, his mother said.
“He wasn’t stable enough to have surgery for it. His only hope was a transplant before it killed him. He walked around two months with a necrotic gangrene gallbladder in him,” Kimberly said. “We were told there was nothing more they could do to save him but a transplant. It was the most devastating thing we had ever been through.”
But on Nov. 30, the family received a call. An organ was available, and they needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. The family does not know much about the donor. He was 21 and donated many of his organs after his death.
“His family is grieving a man who was taken way too soon. He gave our boy hope for a future. A normal future,” Kimberly Grandinette said of the donor.
P.J. and his family were escorted from their home in Mad River Twp. to the hospital in Cincinnati by Sheriff’s Deputy Brandon Baldwin in November. Deputies from other jurisdictions joined the drive to the hospital.
The transplant process went well and P.J. recently had been staying at the Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House. However, the family still has a long journey ahead of them. P.J. will still need to isolate, and there is chance that his body will reject the transplant.
But, his family remains optimistic, especially as they headed home after spending the holiday’s in the hospital.
On Wednesday, P.J. and his family were met by Clark County Sheriff’s Deputies as they crossed back into the county. The limo was secured by Springfield resident Casey Tingley. He came across P.J.’s story online and wanted to do something that would spread cheer.
Tingley had known of P.J.’s mom, who taught his daughter at Springfield City Schools. Tingley also helped organize the gatherings at Greenon and another at Young’s Jersey Dairy to welcome P.J. back home.
Kimberly said the family is focused on making new memories and nurturing P.J.’s dream of becoming a neonatologist, a doctor who specializes in the care of newborn children.
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