9-year-old Girl Live and Kicking from Six Organ Transplant
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9-year-old Girl Live and Kicking after from Six Organ Transplants
Her is an inspiring almost miraculous story of a little child battle with six organ transplant. Medical advancement and luck can really create miracles and prolong life. A nine year old girl from Maine in the name Alannah Shevenell arrived in her home from Boston Hospital with happiness and vigor on her face.
She had just come home from her operation Thursday. She had a new stomach, a liver, spleen, small intestine, pancreas, and a little part in her esophagus. It was 2008 when she got into a bad situation when her doctors said she got a a bad tumor.
When they sent her to Boston Children’s Hospital the doctors told her that because of inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor, Alannah had 50 percent chance to survive in the operation.In October the scheduled date of the transplant, the doctors slowly took out the tumor that had grown with some organs and replaced them from a donor. More of her blood was lost. But still, the operation was completed successfully.
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9-Year-Old Girl Heads Home After 6 Organ Transplant At Children's Hospital
Alannah Shevenell of Hollis underwent 14-and-a-half hours of surgery in October to remove an aggressive tumor and six organs - her stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver, small bowel and the esophagus.
WBZ-TV's Ken MacLeod reports
The tumor had twisted around the organs, so they all had to be transplanted.
"They come together sort of as a cluster, so it's almost like transplanting one big organ," said Dr. Heung Bae Kim, the director of Children's Pediatric Transplant Center.
"The only way to take out this tumor was to remove all of the organs that were involved."
"It was like changing the whole engine of the car. You take the whole thing out and put a whole new engine in."
Dr. Kim said the esophagus transplant was the first in the world, but Alana waited a long time for the perfect match.
"Especially in this type of case, where you need six organs. She waited over a year for these organs, but actually they were the perfect organs for her."
"We waited 15 months. Nobody ever thought we would wait that long and it was getting worse," said Alana's grandmother, Debbie Scolas.
"We'd like to thank, especially the donor family. This was a huge thing, they gave us back Alana."