Friday, January 25, 2008

A "one-in-six-billion miracle."

When she was a little girl of nine, Demi-Lee Brennan got sick and had to go to hospital. She received a donor liver when her own liver failed.

And then strange things happened inside her. Not alien strange, no, anybody can get weird parasitic creatures to grow inside them. No Demi-Lee had something even more unusual happen. Now, at 15, she’s a whole new person…sorta.

Australian girl changes blood group, immune system
Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.

This is an absolutely amazing story. When you consider the care that is taken to match organs to donors. The change from blood type O-negative to O-positive…well that’s pretty amazing, but to change her entire immune system?! Wow! Just, Wow!

Given that only 7 of 10 liver transplants are successful over a five year period because of rejection complications, this young lady will be in a category all her own.

May she enjoy a long, happy and healthy life. But first she’ll have to get the doctors to leave her alone.

2 comments:

Joan of Argghh! said...

It's always nice to go from negative to positive!
:o)

joated said...

What an excellent point!
Certainly something to think about during the current campaign. Now if the newspapers would just join in...Oh, wait. Maybe it's started! (See the next post.)