6-year-old girl goes viral for helping to support her father suffering from kidney failure

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT/Gray News) - A young girl in Virginia has gone viral on social media for coming to her father’s aid after he discovered his kidneys were failing.

Kevin Key said he first noticed trouble with his kidneys when he was in middle school. However, he never experienced any significant issues until he caught COVID-19 in 2020.

The 37-year-old father said his condition steadily grew worse.

Around Thanksgiving last year, he got a call that changed everything.

“My doctor called and said, ‘Hey, I need to see you. Just want to let you know you’re in kidney failure right now,’” Key said.

In January, Key was hospitalized for nearly two weeks.

“It was really hard. I just wanted to be with my family,” he said.

He then spent a month learning how to operate his dialysis equipment so that he could give himself treatments at home, something his wife, Nelisa Key, said he had to adjust to.

“It’s a part-time job within itself, but in order for me to be here, I have to do it,” Kevin Key said.

Nelisa Key said their daughter, Stori, does not want to leave her father’s side.

“It was probably a couple days into treatment when she was just like, ‘Dad, I got this,’” Nelisa Key said.

The 6-year-old took to the new changes in stride, ready to help as soon as possible.

“He taught me at first, but I got the hang of it,” Stori said, adding that she loves her daddy “One hundred 99 one thousand percent.”

Nelisa Key said watching Stori’s insistence on helping her father while he’s ill has been bittersweet.

“It’s heartbreaking to watch, but it’s also heartwarming for me to watch too, to see how much she loves her dad, which I already knew was a lot,” she said. “But since he’s been sick, it’s really just shown me the lengths she would go to be there for her dad.”

Nelisa Key said she started recording Stori helping with Kevin’s dialysis treatments and posting them to social media to keep her out-of-town family updated.

She said she never expected the wider response they eventually received.

“I got a notification it was like, ‘You hit a million views,’ and I was like, ‘A million views?’” Nelisa Key said.

This now-viral Instagram video of Stori turning on Kevin’s dialysis machine and twirling as he received his treatment has been viewed more than 1.7 million times and garnered more than 40,000 likes and comments as of Thursday.

“There were so many prayer comments, and that’s her favorite part,” Nelisa Key said. “One day she realized it had, like, over however many comments and she’s like, ‘Is this how many people are praying for Daddy?’ And so it warms her heart.”

The family’s biggest hope is that Kevin Key can get a kidney transplant.

“I would like someone to donate a kidney for my Daddy,” Stori said.

Kevin Key said his biggest care in the world is to get a new kidney so he can make sure he can be around to provide for his family.

“I need a kidney transplant. That is the ultimate end goal, you know,” he said. “Dialysis, it does help. It’s what I would say is a temporary fix. The long-term goal is to get a transplant, to get a donor.”

Kevin Key is currently on the UNOS kidney transplant wait list with the Virginia Transplant Center at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital.

He just needs a donor match.

Anyone interested in pursuing a donation can register here and list Kevin Key as a desired recipient.