A 19-month-old San Antonio girl with an often-fatal disorder keeping her from eating is ready to go home after having a seven-organ transplant, a doctor said.
Delilah Nevaeh Valdez "likes Chef Boyardee ravioli," University of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital pediatric gastroenterologist Jennifer Garcia said at a news conference. "She's the perfect patient, any GI doctor's dream."
"When she was born they gave her 24 hours to live," said Delilah's mother, Julissa Cerda, 24, who gave birth six weeks early in September. "They basically told us she was going to die because she couldn't eat. I look at these doctors as angels."
Delilah's transplant of a liver, stomach, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine, kidney and spleen was to resolve a rare congenital condition called Berdon syndrome, or megacystis-microcolon-intestinal hypoperistalsis syndrome, which prevents the stomach, intestines, kidneys and bladder from working correctly.
The genetic disorder affecting newborns is found more frequently in girls than boys, researchers say.
"Delilah had a condition in which her smooth muscles don't contract normally," said Dr. Andreas Tzakis, director of the hospital's liver/gastrointestinal transplant program, who performed the nearly 14-hour organ-transplant operation.
"When she ate, the food would not go south," The Miami Herald quoted him as saying. "The amazing thing is not just what happens with the surgery, but that the recovery these patients make can be complete.
"God willing, if patients survive one year, they usually do fine for a very long time. Four or five years can mean a lifetime," he said.
Cerda and Delilah's father, Agapito Valdez, 26, said they would not forget the 3-month-old baby whose organs made it possible for Delilah to live.
"They flew the organs over and it happened so fast," Cerda said, explaining she and Valdez knew nothing about that baby, not even the sex or how the baby died.
"But in order for us to gain the gift of life for our daughter, someone else had to lose theirs," she said. "I keep that baby and the family in my prayers all the time."
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