Girl, 9, Undergoes Rare Double Transplant

Fate is finally starting to smile on Anies Garcia.

The 9-year-old has been on dialysis since she was 3, and this year her heart started to fail following an unsuccessful kidney transplant.

But after UCLA paid for the surgeries and the parents of an 8-year-old boy donated his organs, the Whittier girl left Mattel Children’s Hospital on Friday the country’s second child younger than 10 to have a kidney-heart transplant.

In the hours before her mother took her home, Anies constantly snacked--on grapes, crackers slathered with peanut butter, her mother’s yogurt--and glued school photos inside a dozen thank-you cards for the herd of doctors and nurses who contributed their time.

Doctors said the girl’s 10-day recovery time since the July 30 surgery was remarkable, recalling how just 16 hours after the procedure was finished she gobbled down a bowl of tapioca pudding.

“It hurt the first day, but I’m OK now,” said Anies, eyes wide below a fringe of long lashes. “I’m happy to go home.”

Anies, who was born with nonfunctioning kidneys, has been in and out of the UCLA hospital about 70 times since she was born, said her mother, Patty Mata, a Walgreen’s cashier.

The kidney from her first transplant five years ago failed less than 12 hours after it was inserted, and she never was taken off dialysis. Her heart weakened in the following years to the point that it would take both a heart and kidney transplant for her to live.

She was on Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income people, which will not fund transplants if patients require more than one to survive. Medi-Cal declined to cover the procedure because it is still considered experimental, doctors and Anies’ mother said.

Hoping to contribute in some way to her operation, Anies sold beaded bracelets she made from her bed in the intensive care unit, netting about $70 from doctors and nurses.

“Anies is just such a piece of work,” said Dr. Robert Ettenger, head of the pediatric transplant program. “This is a kid who was on constant minute-to-minute monitoring, making bracelets while we have to recognize the unmitigated horror that she might die before our eyes.”

Anies is the eighth child younger than 18 to undergo a kidney-heart transplant. The youngest, an 8-year-old, is still alive after undergoing the procedure in October 1994.

Ettenger said he was near tears when he asked hospital director Dr. Michael Karpf if UCLA, which performed her first transplant, would donate the second procedure.

“There was no hesitation to say yes,” Karpf said. “Here is a young lady who is at death’s door and doesn’t have time to hassle about payment. You take care of somebody for nine years, you don’t abandon them when they need you.”

Mata said the luck surrounding the procedure--finding a donor within two weeks of signing up on the transplant list, the speed of the procedure and rapid recovery--probably comes from years of patience that their prayers would be answered. Rearing a child with Anies’ medical problems has forced both Mata, 24, and her daughter to mature more quickly than usual.

“I was trying to raise this medically fragile child at 15,” Mata said. “It would be overwhelming for anybody, but it forced me and Anies to grow up together, really fast.”

Anies understands that no matter how good she feels now, she will be vulnerable to health problems for the rest of her life. Her doctors say each organ will last from eight to 12 years, making future transplants a necessity.

Also, she must take 15 medications daily, some of which are essential to keep her body from rejecting the donated organs.

Still, the girl has her future mapped out, starting with dressing up as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” for Halloween and finishing with a career as a doctor--”I don’t know which kind. The medical kind.”

Her pink-sandaled feet dangling from the bed, she enjoyed shaking back her waist-length mane of dark crimped hair, twisted at the top with purple butterfly clips. Doctors and her mother laughed at how much more outgoing she has become since the surgery.

She wrote a letter to her mother detailing her plans for her first weekend at home.

“When I get out of here we’re going to get our hair and nails done,” she wrote in a round, childish hand. “Then we’re going to the mall and spend lots of money on clothes.”

Her mother laughed. “It’s nice to hear her being demanding. It shows she’s definitely feeling better.”