3-Year-Old Nebraska Girl Who Died Of Brain Cancer Saves 2 Boys’ Lives With Liver, Bowel Donation

Thanks to Facebook and news reports, a 2-year-old Indiana, Pittsburg boy got a second chance at life through an organ donation from a 3-year-old Nebraska girl who just died of brain tumour and donated her liver and bowel. Lucas Goeller had a successful liver transplant surgery on Wednesday.

Lucas got the liver of Olivia Swedberg of North Platte, Nebraska. Olivia’s death ended 18 months of waiting by Lucas’s family for a liver. During the last few weeks, the boy’s condition worsened that his family sought the public’s help by creating a Facebook account and a Web page in finding an organ donor, reports Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Besides the spare liver courtesy of Olivia, Lucas got 25 electronic billboard donation from Lamar Advertising to help the Goellers reach more people. When Olivia’s mother read about Lucas’s situation, she donated her daughter’s liver directly to Lucas through the directed donation process, bypassing the sickness level and geography factors used by the national transplant system in determining who gets a donated organ.

Olivia’s small intestines went to 4-year-old Angelo Giorno of Derry Township. The organ transplant surgeries of Angelo and Lucas were done simultaneously, discloses George Mazariegos, chief of pediatric transplantation at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh UPMC.

Before Olivia died, she went on a Disney cruise in Florida. The trip was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She was in Florida when her condition worsened which eventually led to the two organ donations. She died on Tuesday, just two months after she was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.

It is a tumour centralised in the brain stem, and with a zero percent survival rate, according to Lauressa, the mum of Olivia. Lauren Hill, a college basketball player, died of the same ailment in April.

To contact the writer, email: vittoriohernandez@yahooc.com