8-Year-Old Girl, Quadruple Organ Transplant Recipient Meets Donor's Parents
Eight-year-old Kyree Beachem, of Ellwood City, Pa., required surgery and treatment for Hirschsprung's disease--a condition that's marked by missing nerve cells from the colon that complicate food digestion, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
The girl, who underwent a rare quadruple-organ transplant in November, just met the parents of her donor last week: Luis and Evelyn Morales of 5-year-old daughter Arianna Morales, who died of holoprosencephaly in November. The congenital health condition causes the brain to improperly divide and grow, according to the Human Genome Institute.
"It was a very, very emotional meeting," Kyree's mother, Nan Beachem, 51, told ABC News. "No one broke down and sobbed, but there were a lot of quiet tears."
In 2010, Kyree's bowel's failed--requiring her to be hooked up to IV fluids for 22 hours a day. The treatments resulted in serious damage to other organs, and left her waiting for a small bowel, colon, liver and pancreas transplant over the past five years.
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