Baby girl gets unselfish love from foster family, liver donor

The giggling baby girl crawls over to the couch, grabs the seat cushion and pulls herself up.

At 19 months, she's a tad shaky standing there, but she knows what she wants. Scrunching her little nose, where a feeding tube is inserted, she stretches her arms and babbles.

"Oh, my, you do want to be held, don't you?" laughs Brittney Quirk, picking up the child to hug and kiss.

The infant jabbers and her tiny hands touch the face of the now teary-eyed family friend.

Then she reaches out to her foster parents, Sharon and Craig King, and their five children as they walk into the living room from their kitchen. Bless her heart, she wants more hugs and kisses.

Freeze frame that scene, and it speaks of closeness, of a wonder­ful family life.

But as with all snapshots, no matter how moving, it can't reveal how they got to this time and place.

How that happened, the back story of why a baby girl thrives after she seemed destined for an early death from liver failure, reveals a kind of altruism and unwavering commitment to life that some say has been pushed aside by heart-of-stone self-interest and greed.

Because the rights of her biological parents have yet to be determined -- a hearing on that is scheduled for December -- the Las Vegas Review-Journal will not identify the child either through pictures or by name. As long as she remains in the foster care system and her family situation is not formally established, District Court Judge Frank Sullivan has ruled that it's in her best interest to protect her privacy.

But the reactions of people to a baby girl born at University Medical Center on March 1, 2010 -- one who came into this world in far from perfect circumstances -- know no such legal parameters.

Goodness, according to the surgeon who performed the child's transplant surgery, has been known to beget goodness.

FINDING A FOSTER HOME

Soon after her birth, five weeks early and just more than 3 pounds, social workers with the Clark County Department of Family Services phoned Craig and Sharon King of Henderson.

The Kings already had adopted two children they had first foster-parented, and had told the department they were again interested in being foster parents of a newborn. County social workers knew the baby, born without a left thumb and left ear canal, needed stability and unconditional love.

"We were really excited," said Sharon King, 38. "We started to go see her every day when she was still in the neonatal intensive care unit at UMC. We couldn't wait to get her home."

The Kings live in a neighborhood not far from the St. Rose Dominican Hospital, Siena campus.

Craig King, 41, is director of faith formation at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Henderson. His wife, whom he met while both were students at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, home-schools their children.

"We've always wanted a big family," he said. "We find so much joy in raising them. We want to give as many children as we can a good chance at a good life. Our Catholic faith guides us. We believe that every person is precious."

The baby girl left UMC in April 2010 after growing to a little more than 5 pounds, joining a family in which two of the children were biological offspring of the Kings and three were adopted, one through Catholic Charities.

The Kings loved how enthusiastically their children welcomed the baby girl with brown skin and wavy black hair into their home.

Christina, 11, soon started talking to her about what she loved: "Star Wars." Isaiah, 7, wanted to show her how every­thing in the house, such as the lights, work. Anthony, 5, continually questioned her about when she was going to start talking. John Paul, 3, read "Little Red Hen" to her. And Therese, also 3, invited everybody she could find into the house to see her little sister.

TRANSPLANT NEEDED

For about a month, things went as smoothly as they can with a newborn.

But then the Kings noticed digestion problems and that her skin and the whites of her eyes were yellowing.

Tests showed she had a rare condition known as biliary atresia, which occurs when bile ducts inside or outside the liver do not develop normally. Bile flow from the liver was blocked, which can be deadly.

An operation called the Kasai procedure was performed in mid-May 2010 at St. Rose Dominican, Siena to connect the liver to the small intestine, bypassing the abnormal ducts.

At first, it seemed to work. But before long, the digestion problems and yellow­ness returned. X-rays, ultrasounds, blood tests and biopsies all pointed to one thing: liver transplantation.

The energetic little one who had waved her hands and kicked her legs and so loved to smile was now listless and often cried in pain. Medications did little to energize or calm her.

By summer, doctors sent the Kings and their foster child to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. More tests were done, and she was placed on a transplant list.

Returning home with the little girl, the Kings were besieged with questions from their other children about their new sister. Anthony wanted to know if she was going to die.

An operation can save her life, his parents reassured him.

But by February 2011, the baby girl's health had further deteriorated. An operation using the liver of a deceased donor seemed less and less likely as no compatible matches could be found.

A FACEBOOK FRIEND

Doctors at the Los Angeles hospital advised the family to pursue a living donor, but there was no immediate family member who was a match.

If a person with a compatible blood type and anatomy donates a segment of his liver, it will grow back to its original size in just a few weeks after the donation. The child's new liver will grow to appropriate size, and continue to grow normally into adulthood.

More than 16,000 people need a liver transplant each year in the United States, and just 6,300 a year get one. Few are from living donors. More than 1,400 people die each year waiting for a liver transplant.

Worried the baby girl they hoped to adopt was going to die, the Kings took to Facebook and wrote of their plight. They received contacts from several volunteers, but for one reason or another -- the proximity of one possible donor and another's inability to take off weeks from work -- they didn't pan out.

Friends started prayer groups in Las Vegas, and family members in other parts of the country did so, too. Thousands of people were praying for a compatible donor.

Brittney Quirk, 23, knew the Kings from their work with Catholic youth groups in Southern Nevada. And after returning from college in Kansas, the former missionary saw the Facebook page.

"I knew my O-positive blood type was compatible," she said. "I always said I would be an organ donor. Why wouldn't you do this if you could? I knew it was the right thing to do. What kind of person would I be if I didn't step forward? I had to do it."

She visited the Kings and fell in love with the little girl. Quirk, who is pursuing a speech pathology degree at Nevada State College, went to California to be tested at a hospital run by the University of Southern California, where her surgery would be if she proved a suitable donor.

Doctors were concerned about her asthma. A pulmonologist tested and retested her lungs.

On June 21, two months after she filled out the paperwork as a possible donor, she was cleared.

County social workers were already working with Medicaid, said Christine Skorupski, a spokeswoman for the Department of Family Services.

"We wanted to be as ready as possible for this child, just as we always try to be," she said.

Because of the baby girl's fragile condition, surgery was set almost immediately, for June 28.

"What she was doing was so wonderful," Craig King said last week of Quirk. "We had no way to thank her."

Sharon King took her foster daughter to the children's hospital. After a brief trip home, Quirk went back to USC.

The day before the scheduled procedure, hospital authorities said a deceased donor's liver may have been found.

It was a false alarm, and Quirk acknowledged that "being on a roller coaster like that wasn't easy."

GIFT OF LIFE

On June 28, both surgeries went off without a hitch. After Quirk's four-hour surgery, the USC medical team put her donated segment of liver on ice and drove it to nearby Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Following his six-hour implantation of the segment into the baby, Dr. Yuri Genyk was both pleased and admiring.

"It went very well," he said. "It gives this little girl a good chance at life. It is very touching to see this commitment to a little girl from people who were, in a way, strangers. It was so important to so many people that she grow up as normal as possible. It's the most altruistic thing they could do, giving her the gift of life. I think when people hear of this, they will be more likely to help others."

Sharon King said the baby girl was lucky to have Genyk, one of the world's foremost pediatric transplant surgeons: "We left it in God's hands and he saw fit to give the help we needed."

The surgeries were not painless. For a couple of days after her surgery, Quirk had to be left in darkness. She had a terrible reaction to the epidural anesthetic for pain and was hit by migraines.

"I thought my head was going to come off," she said.

A few days after the procedure, when she went to see the baby girl, who was still in intensive care, she couldn't lift the child.

"I wanted to hold her so badly, but I was too weak from where they cut into my abdomen," she said. "That area really, really hurt. But I could deal with that, because I saw that the baby was smiling again and her color was good."

Quirk's mother, Lori Radecki, admitted to being worried.

"Things can always go wrong in an operation, as you know," she said following the surgery. "But she did something that was so wonderful, giving that baby a chance. As a mother, I'm so proud."

Only recently did Quirk stop having abdominal pain.

The baby girl stayed in intensive care for about a month as doctors worked to keep her from rejecting the organ. Tubes and IVs seemed to be everywhere on her tiny body, Sharon King said.

The child will be on anti-rejection medicine for the rest of her life. If all goes well, she should live well into adulthood.

As planned, Craig King brought the couple's other children to be with his wife and mother-in-law at the Ronald McDonald House in Pasadena. He joined them on weekends.

"I couldn't believe they only wanted a $15 donation a day, and then other groups brought in food to my family," he said. "That allowed me to work. We could have never made it financially without the good people from Mc­Donald's."

Sharon King said the experience helped her children learn to work together even better as a family.

"They wanted to help other families just as the people at the Ronald Mc­Donald House were helping them."

A LIFETIME BOND

Almost four months after the transplant, the Kings are more convinced than ever that people want to mobilize and help others. All they need is a clear purpose, they said.

"So many strangers were willing to donate parts of their livers," Sharon King said.

The Kings still make frequent trips to the doctor with the baby girl to make sure she is progressing as she should.

She is. She has gained 5 pounds and at least a couple of inches since the operation.

The biggest difficulty is that she still must be fed through a feeding tube as her intestines are basically still learning how to digest food.

Doctors expect that to end in the next few months.

Quirk, who works two jobs in addition to attending college, often goes to the Kings' home.

Sharon King still marvels at what Quirk did for a little girl: "She's Christlike."

Quirk volunteers to baby-sit so Sharon and Craig can get out of the house. She loves to see all the children, she says, and to see that the baby girl is OK.

"I don't think about a part of me being in her," she said. "I just want to know that she's healthy now."

Two weeks ago, the Kings said doctors were afraid that a week of high temperatures meant the baby girl was rejecting her new liver. They said they did a lot of praying.

Tests showed the baby girl only had the flu.

And, said Sharon King, "It's the first time in my life that I've been happy that one of my children had the flu."

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at
pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.