17 y/o girl who received wrong organs gets a second chance

[ERNurse752]

DURHAM, N.C. (Feb. 20) - Doctors located an organ donor early Thursday for a 17-year-old girl clinging to life after she received a heart and lungs that didn't match her blood type, a spokeswoman said.

Jesica Santillan was to undergo organ transplant surgery Thursday morning at Duke University Hospital.

The procedure has a 50-50 success rate, said Renee McCormick, a spokeswoman for a charity that is helping pay the girl's medical bills.

McCormick called the new organs an ''incredibly good match.''

''We are elated,'' she told CNN. ''The family is overjoyed.''

The organ was found at 1 a.m. Thursday.

McCormick said she didn't know who donated the organs, but they were donated directly to Jesica, who mistakenly received organs incompatible with her type O-positive blood during a transplant Feb. 7 at Duke University Hospital.

Her condition steadily deteriorated after the botched operation, and she suffered a heart attack Feb. 10 and a seizure on Sunday. A machine has kept her heart and lungs going. A scan Wednesday found no signs of brain damage, McCormick said.

Jesica's body was rejecting the new organs because of the different blood types. Antibodies in her blood attacked the organs as foreign objects.

The lead surgeon said Wednesday he believed appropriate checks were made before the organs were offered to the girl.

''I am heartbroken about what happened to Jesica. My focus has been on providing her with the heart and lungs she needs so she could lead a normal life,'' Dr. James Jaggers said in a statement.

Jaggers said he told the girl's parents immediately after the operation that an error had occurred, but the statement didn't indicate when he realized it happened.

The organs were flown from Boston to Durham and included paperwork correctly listing the donor's type-A blood, said Sean Fitzpatrick of the New England Organ Bank of Newton, Mass., which sent the first set of heart and lungs.

Two Duke surgeons who had patients with type-A positive blood declined the organs but a third doctor requested them for Jesica, according to Carolina Donor Services, an organ procurement organization. The organization did not identify the doctor.

Duke hospital officials had no comment Wednesday on why doctors sought the type-A organs for Jesica.

Jesica, who is from a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico, needed the transplant because a heart deformity kept her lungs from getting oxygen into her blood. Doctors said she would have died within six months without a transplant.

AP-NY-02-20-03 0754EST

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

[KaroSnowQueen, RN]

Just a thought.............As part of the healthcare system, I understand everyone being aghast at the family spokesperson saying the dr. murdered this little girl and they want him to go to jail, etc, etc, etc.

HOWEVER...........Have any of you experienced a medical error in your family that caused your loved one to die? I have. A highly respected surgeon took out the entire unaffected lung from a person in my family diagnosed with lung CA. Left in the cancerous one. He died four and a half months later with mets to the brain.

Yes, he admitted his mistake three days later. Did that save our loved one's life? No. This was before the days of lung transplants, etc. There was nothing to do but go home and die.

Did we all think and feel that our loved one's death was this doctor's fault? Did we think he murdered him? Hell yes we did and still do.

This was before I became a nurse. Now as a nurse do I look back and feel bad for the sorrow I'm sure this MD felt? Yes. Does it make think any more positively of him. NO!!!!

Just giving the other side from someone who's been there.

And yes, I think it's disrespectful to take a thread about this medical error probably costing this little girl her life and turn it into immigrant bashing.

[whipping girl in 07, RN]

I have to agree with Mattsmom; brain damage is a risk of the kind of surgery Jessica had and just because some mistakes were made doesn't mean she would have survived anyway.

We spend so much time saving lives (so we think) that we forget that it's not really in our hands. I lost a patient the other day who came in for a simple outpatient procedure and got the pleasure (not!) of telling the son that was with him in the hospital to call his family, because Dad probably wouldn't make it through the night. I had one of the most stressful shifts of my life, trying to save that man. But in the end, death won and I was reminded that we just can't save everyone.

But it doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

I feel for the family and for the transplant team. I can't imagine the guilt the doctors and nurses feel that they made a mistake that may have contributed to Jessica's death.

On another note, our hospital policy is that we call the organ procurement agency on any patient with a GCS of 5 or less, any impending brain death, and all deaths in general. We are not allowed to even "feel out" the family about organ donation before the call is made, and we can't ask them not to approach the family if the family has already said they don't want to donate their loved one's organs. The nurse will come, review the chart, and approach the family, even if the neurosurgeon has not even uttered the words "brain death." Our neuros are getting fed up with this and I can understand why. Sometimes I think the OPA sees the neuros as someone to drum up business and would like to see them either "speed along" the impending brain death or even not do everything possible to save the patient. JMHO.

[CountrifiedRN]

I haven't really been able to catch a whole news story on this little girl, I always seem to catch it halfway thru. I'm wondering who exactly this Mahoney is?

It seems like every picture I see has him in it, and he is always the one speaking to the media. Once I heard him refer to Jesica as "our baby", saying 'our baby has suffered for three years'.... At the time I thought he was a member of the family, but then heard he is a family friend? I guess it just seems odd that he is SO involved, and I hardly ever see the mother.

Just wondering if someone can fill me in. It seems like a strange situation.

[Sally_ICURN]

Originally posted by RN2bNC

Just wondering if someone can fill me in.

He's the family's spokesperson, and a fundraiser for disadvantaged children.

http://www.4jhc.org/jesicastory.html

[emily_mom]

Originally posted by sjoe

kristy writes: "I don't think anyone deserves to die,"

Wake up. EVERYONE on this planet gets to die.

You totally took that out of context. The point I am trying to make is that NO child DESERVES to die b/c she isn't from America or because of errors made.

I just think that if this were your child, you would go to the ends of the earth to help her and not say, "I'm sorry. I know you need a new heart and lungs, but we're from Mexico and therefore not entitled to quality healthcare."

[Q.]

With regards to this "spokesperson," I have a question. Every time I read an article about the story, this Mahoney is quoted as saying that the doctors "were too concerned with their images and wasted precious time in finding replacement organs." Personally I think it's remarkable that they found organs in less than 2 weeks, but anyway....

Do Jesica's parents speak English? Does Mahoney speak Spanish? Is he translating for them?

I have concerns with this Mahoney because he seems to be the one pressing on with criminal prosecution for the transplant team, calling them "murderers." Does he perhaps have an interest in this that we don't know about? What's the history with this dude?

[MishlB]

Originally posted by mattsmom81

SJoe we will probably be accused of cynicism but I reacted the same as you...they are here illegally and probably receiving food stamps and on public assistance. I can think of better uses for my tax dollars today.

I also have no tolerance for people in our country illegally anymore since 911....we need to stop being so 'caring' regarding illegals. She is a lovely child and I wish her the best but we need to start saying no, IMHO. I would not be surprised to find our tax dollars helped fund this surgery in the first place, as the government is too free with the taxpayers' $ IMO.

Gotta also admit I wondered who got killed (or what else illegal happened) to get these organs so fast...but I am more than a litle cynical towards the whole organ donation process...as I've had bad experiences with organ/tissue banks and their very proprietary attitudes towards the newly dead. It troubles me.

My prayers are with this girl and I hope she recovers.

I received food stamps and was on public assistance...and??? How nice of you to include her in your prayers. Hypocrite.

[sunnygirl272]

Originally posted by Susy K

What's the history with this dude?

Here are a coupla links i found....still quite odd IMHO....

http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-323516.html ... Advocate made girl his cause .... -- With his raspy voice and a white Panama hat permanently atop his head, Mack Mahoney made international news this week, challenging Duke University Hospital to explain how it transplanted a heart and lungs of the wrong blood type into 17-year-old Jesica Santillan.

Mahoney, a Louisburg homebuilder, has grown to love the Mexican teenager like a granddaughter since reading about her in his local paper. Three years ago, he started a charity in her name to help the families of critically ill children.....

Or maybe the Vietnam War veteran, who had part of his larynx removed during throat cancer surgery, knows what it's like to face death.

He was discharged days before the Tet Offensive and watched on television as the Viet Cong overran U.S. positions where he knew his friends were stationed. He and his wife, Nita, also lost a child more than 20 years ago, a death they attribute, along with the cancer, to Mahoney's exposure to Agent Orange.

....."I've never gone to Mack's house without Jesica being there," said Gil Silva, a Louisburg businessman who helped him start the charity. "He is very close to all of the children, but because she was the first one, she's actually like a grandchild to him."

Mahoney has two daughters and three grandchildren of his own. All help with the charity.

The Dallas, Texas, native moved to Louisburg about seven years ago. He is not a millionaire and drives a pickup truck, he and his friends said. Still, Mahoney has given tens of thousands of dollars of his own money for Santillan's care.

The first campaign for Santillan was to raise $7,000 for a cardiac exam to diagnose her then-unknown condition. Mahoney and his wife "came out of the woodwork" to help, said Gary Cunard, publisher of the Franklin Times.

"It has become their cause, their reason for being," he said. "[Mahoney] just wanted to help this little child."

In one of its first reports, the paper wrote how Santillan's family lived in a mobile home without a telephone or air conditioning, Cunard said.

"I think that was the first thing Mack Mahoney did, went out there and had an AC [unit] in that mobile home."

****************************************

Home Builder Champions Transplant Teen

http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-transplant-advocate0222feb21,0,470502.story?coll=sns-ap-science-headlines

By ALLEN G. BREED

Associated Press Writer

February 22, 2003, 2:12 AM EST

DURHAM, N.C. -- Two decades ago, Mack Mahoney lost his 2-month-old son, Anthony, after an operation to correct a kidney defect. He felt the operation was botched, but didn't see the sense in taking any action.

This time around, Mahoney refuses to stay silent. ....

His involvement with Jesica started with what was supposed to have been an anonymous donation to help pay her medical bills. But when the family insisted on meeting him, Mahoney became the point man in the effort to raise money for Jesica's care.

Now, a man who nearly lost his voice to a false diagnosis of throat cancer has become the mouthpiece for a family struggling to communicate in a foreign tongue.

"Nobody else can fight for her," said Mahoney, who was left with a gravely whisper after losing half his larynx. "Her family does not speak English. They can bully them around and do all they want to, and I just refuse to let them bully me. That's the difference.

"I don't bully. And they can't intimidate me, because I don't intimidate." ......

Mahoney managed Elizabeth Dole's Senate campaign in Franklin County last year, and he reached out to her for help with Jesica's case.

"They gutted her like a fish," he told Dole tearfully.

While Mahoney was having a contentious meeting with the Duke brass, Dole called him on his cell phone and asked to speak to the hospital's top administrator.

Until then, he said, Duke was trying to find ways to get around his medical power of attorney and had threatened to kick him out of the hospital.

"He is a tough guy," says Renee McCormick, a land developer who is helping Mahoney. "This is not a guy who cries. ... Mack has lived this ordeal with her for three years."

Jesica's mother, Magdalena, has said that without Mahoney to raise a fuss, Duke would have let Jesica quietly die. McCormick agrees.

"I think she would have died from rejection, and no one would have known why," she says.

Mahoney learned Spanish growing up near Dallas and running a business in Mexico. He spends his days in the pediatric intensive care unit, translating for the Santillans and comforting them.....

[mattsmom81]

Originally posted by MishlB

I received food stamps and was on public assistance...and??? How nice of you to include her in your prayers. Hypocrite.

And that of course would be YOUR opinion, right?

Namecaller.

[SharonH, RN]

Originally posted by sunnygirl272

Here are a coupla links i found....still quite odd IMHO....

What is so odd about it? He is an individual who has decided to assist and advocate for others who may not be able to do so for themselves. And apparently he has developed a mistrust of the health care system that is well-founded based on personal experience. It seems that many are determined to find a problem with this case. It turned that our precious tax dollars were not funding the operation, that they were here legally with the help of one America's least compassionate senators nonetheless, that immigrants are limited to only receiving 5% of transplant operations and people are still unhappy. Now they don't like the Mahoney guy. Sheesh.

[ktwlpn, LPN]

It's just been announced that she has been removed from life support.The family refused to donate any of her organs....

[Q.]

Originally posted by SharonMH31

Now they don't like the Mahoney guy. Sheesh.

They? You mean me questioning the history of Mahoney? I don't think that is "not liking" the man. I think it's simply questioning if he has any other motives besides altruistic ones. And asking if he is translating is a legit question - not to mention if it's true, an ethical one at best.