Life Battery for application prototype

Just FYI, I wrote a sketch to turn off the 2x16 LCD background light when I didn't want something displayed. It worked well for months and then it stopped lighting. I am guessing that the LED+ draws more current than the OUTPUT pin can handle because the output was no longer changing state. So I added a transistor driver to the LED+ (pin 15 on my LED display) circuit and connected it to another OUTPUT pin.