Please make giving a resolution in 2012

As we are making our New Year's resolutions, let’s add one more thing to our lists – make life better for children. If you have been out and about this holiday season, you may have seen the new Children’s billboards featuring patient Annabella Spears spreading the message of peace, joy, and giving! 2011 has been a challenging but triumphant year for Annabella. As the Spears family celebrates a new year, they have only a scar across their daughter’s tummy to remind them of the events of the past year.

First-time parents, Alexa and Shad, brought newborn Annabella to their Dallas home in Oct. 2010, but after seven weeks, they noticed that her skin looked yellow. A trip to the pediatrician landed Annabella at Children’s, where she underwent extensive testing and was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts.

Without a transplant, Annabella’s liver would fail. She was listed for a new liver in March 2011. “I didn’t want to ask, but I kept wondering if we would lose her, because I had no idea really what ‘transplant’ meant, and it sounded really scary,” Alexa said. “I just kept thinking that we couldn’t lose our little girl.”

All her parents could do was wait for a liver that would be a match for Annabella. She regularly visited the Solid Organ Transplant clinic at Children’s and was closely monitored.

Dr. Dev Desai, division director of pediatric transplantation at Children’s and associate professor of surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, would be the surgeon implanting the liver when the time came. “Annabella’s liver failed rapidly, and because of the quickness of her disease, she went to the top of the waiting list,” Dr. Desai said.

At 6:30 a.m. on June 16, Alexa and Shad received the call they had been waiting on for three months. They couldn’t believe the day had finally come. Dr. Desai flew in a jet to procure the organ, returning to Children’s where 8-month-old Annabella
was in the operating room being prepped.

After a successful surgery, Annabella recovered perfectly. “It’s pretty amazing — her skin has gotten pinker, and the whites of her eyes are white again, instead of yellow,” Alexa said. “She has energy plus, and she is rolling over, lying on her belly and having a great time. It’s remarkable.”

You can help make stories like Annabella’s possible by joining Children’s in our daily mission to make life better for children. Please consider making a gift today, and make a difference in the life of a child.

Standing for the first time

Fifteen-month-old Mya Saysanam stood for the first time a few weeks ago. I know because I saw it happen while I was interviewing her family.

Although I wouldn't usually pay much attention to the first stand of any child who wasn't my own, this instance struck me as particularly momentous.

Liver experts at Children's diagnosed Mya with acute liver failure when she was 4 months old. The diagnosis shocked her parents.

In the span of a couple of days, they went from thinking she was completely healthy to not knowing if she would live to see her first birthday, much less stand on her own.

"I went numb when I found out," Mya's father, Sye Saysanam, said.

Children's was the best place to come
There is nothing good about that news for any parent, but if there was any bright spot to be found, it was that Mya came to Children's. As the only pediatric liver transplant facility in North Texas, Children's was the only place near Mya's home in Fort Worth that had the staff with the expertise to treat her condition.

And her condition deteriorated quickly. Just a few weeks after her diagnosis, her liver lost the capacity to function on its own. She had to be admitted to Children's until she could get a transplant, and no one knew for sure when that would be - a month, a year or even longer.

"They gave us a pager to alert us when she received a new organ," Sye said. "I couldn't take my eyes off of it."

"We just prayed and prayed and prayed," her mother, Krista Ketnourath, said.

Brief wait leads to permanent memories
The wait fortunately was short. A perfectly sized liver for Mya became available only two weeks after her admission. Drs. Dev Desai and Meelie Debroy took her in for surgery at midnight.

After staying up all night, Mya's parents saw their daughter emerge from surgery at 8 a.m. It was the first time they had ever seen her with a healthy liver.

"I'll always remember the first time she opened her eyes in ICU and they weren't yellow anymore," said Krista. "I always thought she was a beautiful child, but after that, I just thought, 'Oh my gosh, she really is beautiful.'"

And Krista said she will also never forget seeing Mya stand for the first time and what that symbolized.

"Now she has a new life," she said. "Now she's going to grow up."

Hundreds rise up to a tough challenge

Last week we were gearing up for the TX TOUGH 2009 Bike Bash - a 6.2-mile, traffic-free bike ride that started at Victory Park and ran through downtown Dallas. I'm happy to report that hundreds of people laced up their shoes and toughed it out to ride in honor of the patients at Children's.

One such patient is 11-year-old Tatum Null who was out at the event to support the place that saved her life. Tatum underwent a liver transplant in 2005 and since then she has given back by supporting the hospital in a number of ways.

Read more about Tatum and the TX TOUGH event.