Bellows Falls mother plans benefit 'Walk for Cody'
Brattleboro Reformer | By DOMENIC POLI 
Photo: Cody Morin, age 17, needs a liver transplant. His mother, Darla Fletcher, has organÂized a Walk for Cody on April 15 to raise funds to defray medical costs.
BELLOWS FALLS -- Darla Fletcher's son, Cody Morin, had his first liver surgery when he was just 12 days old.
Morin, now 17, appeared to be out of danger after that, until last year when something didn't seem quite right with him.
"Somebody said to me, ‘You need to look at Cody's eyes,'" Fletcher recalled. "They were all yellow."
Morin's liver problems had returned, leaving him jaundiced. He was born without bile ducts in his liver and since last year has undergone 13 procedures (two of them major ones) to clear a pathway for bile to drain. But Morin's doctors say this just buys him some time and he needs a liver transplant to survive.
But the price tag that comes with that surgery, and the constant travel to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., has been enormous. Just one week of treatment consisted of 1,000 miles of travel and upon hearing that the life-saving transplant could run approximately $250,000, Fletcher decided to get in motion to help her ailing son.
She is organizing "Walk for Cody," in which she and her partner Khalif Shabazz will leave Bellows Falls and walk for 24 consecutive hours. The walk is slated to begin at 8 a.m. on Monday, April 15, and the pair plan to start in the village and walk along Route 5 to Brattleboro before heading to Keene, N.H., via Route 9. From Keene, they plan to go to Walpole, N.H., and then mosey back to Bellows Falls.
Morin, now 17, appeared to be out of danger after that, until last year when something didn't seem quite right with him.
"Somebody said to me, ‘You need to look at Cody's eyes,'" Fletcher recalled. "They were all yellow."
Morin's liver problems had returned, leaving him jaundiced. He was born without bile ducts in his liver and since last year has undergone 13 procedures (two of them major ones) to clear a pathway for bile to drain. But Morin's doctors say this just buys him some time and he needs a liver transplant to survive.
But the price tag that comes with that surgery, and the constant travel to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., has been enormous. Just one week of treatment consisted of 1,000 miles of travel and upon hearing that the life-saving transplant could run approximately $250,000, Fletcher decided to get in motion to help her ailing son.
She is organizing "Walk for Cody," in which she and her partner Khalif Shabazz will leave Bellows Falls and walk for 24 consecutive hours. The walk is slated to begin at 8 a.m. on Monday, April 15, and the pair plan to start in the village and walk along Route 5 to Brattleboro before heading to Keene, N.H., via Route 9. From Keene, they plan to go to Walpole, N.H., and then mosey back to Bellows Falls.
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