Local Boy To Compete In National Transplant Games

SPOKANE — A Newman Lake boy will compete in the National Transplant Games.

At three years old Brandon Rankin received his mother’s kidney and is now a healthy thirteen year old.

He’s ready to win four events at the Olympic style games. Brandon Rankin has already won, even before he competes alongside other transplant recipients this weekend. He has won the battle to survive.

Brandon spent the majority of his first three years in the hospital.

“He went through many surgeries, he went through dialysis,” Brandon’s mom Monica Rankin said.

Eventually a kidney transplant was his only hope. When Brandon was three his mom gave him life, for a second time. Monica Rankin saved her son with one of her kidneys.

“Without it I wouldn’t have been able to live,” said Brandon Rankin.

Ever since the surgery, he along with his whole family have been active. They’re an athletic family and they say a daily dose of sports is just about as important as a daily dose of pills.

Brandon’s mom says she’s not the only one who’s been rooting him on since he was born.

“I tell him that God gave him what he gave him for a reason and he’s handling it because God knew he would,” Monica Rankin said.