Now, the sassy girl who religiously follows “The Bachelor’’ on television and spouts comebacks to her grandmother’s every statement is back on her feet. And today, 98 days after the surgery, she is headed home.
“Dr. Kim, he saved me,’’ Alannah said yesterday, between playing hands of Crazy 8s.
Alannah can barely recall a life without hospital visits, tubes, and needles, and talk of the rare myofibroblastic tumor diagnosed when she was 4 years old. Surgeons tried to cut away chunks of the tumor to limit its size, but it kept returning and snaked up her esophagus, the tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach.
Chemotherapy did not work. The tumor distended her stomach. She could no longer swallow.
“The tumor was like cement gluing everything together,’’ recalled Debi Skolas, Alannah’s grandmother, who serves as one of Alannah’s primary guardians.
As time wore on, the future looked bleak. Oncologists ran out of treatment options. In July 2010, Skolas sat down with end-of-life caretakers to discuss how to manage Alannah’s last months.
As they walked out of the room, Kim walked in. The surgeon had a possibility: a transplant.
“I don’t think we ever gave up,’’ said Skolas, 57. “I don’t think I ever believed she was going to die.’’
Still, a transplant meant waiting, and child donors, especially those with all six of the necessary intact organs, were few and far between. Alannah was able to garner a spot on the transplant waiting list because her cancer was considered “benign’’; it was not spreading to other parts of her body. But it was growing, enveloping the organs in her abdomen and moving up into her chest. Last fall, her health began to deteriorate. Skolas began to lose hope that her granddaughter would survive to receive a transplant.
Finally, on Oct. 27 , at 10:45 p.m., the hospital called. A donor had been identified. Alannah would receive new organs the next day.
