Katy Mahon, 9, gets a kiss from her mother Amy Mahon, after going for a quick swim.

LEWISBURG, Pa. — A 40-year-old tattoo-covered, motorcycle-riding baseball coach planned to save the life of Katy Mahon.

As it turns out, the tiny 9-year-old Lewisburg girl — with big, hazel eyes that peek out from under her shaggy blonde bangs — saved Geo Connolly from an unexpected and premature death.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

“We thought we had it all figured out,” says Amy Mahon, a single mother whose daughter was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure on June 24, 2014. “Turns out we didn’t have any idea.”

The devastating news about Katy came soon after Amy moved back to Lewisburg from North Carolina with Katy and son, Cory, 11, looking for “a fresh start in familiar surroundings.”

Amy took her children to North Carolina to visit their grandparents on June 22, 2014.

“Two days later I was driving south, back to where I had just come from,” she said. “It was eight hours of me alternately screaming and crying and prayers that Katy would still be alive when I got there.”

At first it wasn’t clear what was happening to her daughter. Until then, Katy had been a perfectly healthy 8-year-old.

All Amy knew as she drove south was that Katy was seriously ill and the reports she was receiving from emergency room physicians and nurses weren’t promising.

“I spoke to an endless line of doctors asking for consent for emergency surgery and emergency dialysis,” said Amy, a former registered nurse. “I knew what her blood work showed and I knew how grave the situation was. In nursing school you are taught that some numbers are ‘incompatible with life.’

“Hers were really close.”

Tests revealed that Katy had end-stage renal disease and that 90 percent of her kidney’s filters were scarred.

Katy must have a kidney transplant, physicians told Amy.

After four months of surgeries, procedures, chemotherapy and additional tests in North Carolina, Amy brought Katy and Cory back to Lewisburg, where Katy began at-home dialysis while waiting for a new kidney, was taught by a visiting teacher and participated in light, noncontact activities.

Katy joined a Lewisburg youth basketball league.

She wasn’t permitted to play in games because of her health, but her energy and enthusiasm inspired her teammates, for whom she cheered and danced with a big grin on her face from the sidelines.

Making a connection

This spring, Amy registered Cory to play baseball.

“I wanted for him to do something fun,” Amy said. “This whole situation has been tougher on Cory than it has been on any of us because my focus the past year has been on keeping Katy alive and he has had to take the back seat. It’s difficult for him.

“There have been many times when we’ve had to go to the hospital for some random thing and we’ve ended up having to stay there and his whole life gets interrupted.”

Baseball would be a good outlet for Cory’s energy and emotion, Amy thought.

Little did she know that decision would also change all of their lives, and that of Geo Connolly.

Connolly took Cory under his wing and provided guidance, support and a few hours of fun at baseball practice every day. A coach in the Mountain View Midget League Baseball in Kelly Township for the past 15 years, he’d done this many times before.

“You could see that playing baseball again brought (Cory) happiness,” Connolly said. “He made new friends and had fun and excelled at the sport.”

Connolly noticed the “natural athlete” in Cory, and something else.

“I saw Katy just standing by the fence watching,” Connolly said. “I thought it was unusual that her mom didn’t sign her up too, so I went over and asked her why she wasn’t playing.”

That’s when Connolly, a married father of two and welder at ACF in Milton, learned about Katy’s end-stage renal diagnosis.

“It was only the second time I’d ever spoken to him,” Amy recalled. “He looked at me and said, ‘What do I have to do to get tested?’”

Connolly was offering one of his kidneys to a little girl he had just met.

“The first step was to get a blood sample from both (Geo) Connolly and Katy,” Amy said.

Compatible?

Mixed blood from Katy and Connolly was sent to a lab in St. Louis to determine whether they were compatible. Ten days later, they learned Connolly was a 100 percent match.

Connolly met with physicians and specialists at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville for a thorough physical and mental screening.

“I had to go through all kinds of testing,” he said. “There was extensive blood work, cardiology, nephrology — everything.”

With each step, Connolly moved closer to becoming the man who would save Katy’s life. A surgery date was set — July 31.

An excited Amy wrote a post on the Team Katy Facebook page she had created.

“What does the Warrior Princess have in common with this bald-headed, covered with tattoos, Harley rider (his words, not mine) ?????” Amy wrote. “On July 31 they are going to share a set of kidneys!”

As the surgery date loomed, Connolly continued to undergo testing as part of the pre-transplant process.

On July 8, Connolly underwent a 4-dimensional CAT scan to determine which kidney physicians would remove from his body and place into Katy’s — and everything fell apart.

“I was waiting around for the phone call,” Connolly said. “When the call finally came I asked, ‘Do you have good news for me?’ When they said ‘No, Geo, I’ve got everything but good news,’ I thought maybe something was wrong with the blood vessels.

“That’s what doctors had told me could go wrong, that I might have too many blood vessels in my kidneys.”

Connolly was devastated by what he heard on the telephone.

“(The physician) said my left kidney was essentially encompassed by a cancerous tumor and would need to be removed.”

Heartsick and with mixed emotions, Connolly picked up the phone to call Amy.

“I was a mess,” he said. “The only thing I was thankful for at that point was that Katy was away at Camp Kydnie (in Millville) and we had a couple of days to figure out how we were going to break the news to her.”

Amy told Katy that Connolly was too ill to be the one to save her life.

“Of course, Katy was disappointed that she would not be getting a kidney,” Amy said. “But in true Katy fashion, her mind directly went to being upset that Geo is sick.”

Support

Those who know Katy describe her as being funny, smart, sassy and sweet. She can be very shy and doesn’t talk much about her condition.

But ask her what she likes best about Connolly and she opens up.

“Everything,” she said. “He’s funny … and I like dancing with him in the back of his truck.”

Connolly will undergo surgery Friday.

His kidney will be removed and surgeons will check to make sure the cancer hasn’t spread. A specific treatment regimen will be determined if necessary.

Amy plans on being right there at Geisinger Medical Center to support Connolly the way he so selflessly supported her family.

“From the beginning he has been a blessing,” Amy said. “OK, so it didn’t turn out the way we thought it was going to, but at the end of the day it’s still turned out pretty darned amazing.”

Connolly feels the same way.

“As bad as this has been I wouldn’t want it to have turned out any other way because without them in my life don’t know where I would be,” he said.

Physicians told Connolly that had it not been for the extensive testing, he very well may have died before he showed symptoms of kidney cancer.

“Here we all thought I was brought into her life to save it,” Connolly said, “but as it turns out, it was the other way around.”

Katy “is going to be fine,” Amy said. “She will get a kidney. She is 9 years old and is in as stable a condition as she could be for what’s going on. She was put right back on the transplant list.”

Until then, Katy will continue to watch her diet and ride her bike.

In August, she will finally get to go back to school, where she’ll be a fourth-grader at Linntown Intermediate School.

She hopes to once again play basketball and baseball.

Next year, Connolly would like her to start pitching for his team, the Cubs.

Jerri Brouse writes for the Daily Item in Sunbury, Pa.