Young organ donor honored for ‘gift beyond measure’
When it became apparent that their 5-year-old daughter would not survive the injuries she received from being mauled by a pit bull, Katya Todesco’s parents decided to donate her organs.
Katya was playing in the backyard of a friend’s house in Simi Valley in September 2008 when she bumped into or fell over the dog. She was bitten on her face and neck. Katya died three days later.
On Monday, Katya was posthumously honored by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for the organ transplants her death made possible, which “saved the lives of four others,” said Lyndsay LaGree, a hospital representative.
Katya’s heart, kidneys and liver were donated to three children and one adult, LaGree said.
The recipient of her heart, Kyle Martin, 7, suffered from restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition that does not allow the heart to properly fill up with blood. Doctors estimated that he had two years to live without a transplant.
Kyle was 5 when he received his new heart and is now doing wonderfully, said his mother, Lina Martin.
“We have been given a gift beyond measure,” she said. “Beyond anything we can ever repay.”
The two families have met a few times since the transplant. On Monday, Katya’s parents asked if they could listen to Kyle’s heartbeat. They both knelt down, put their ears to his chest and listened to Katya’s heart beat inside him, Martin said.
The two families, along with physicians and nurses from the hospital that cared for Katya, decorated a floragraph — a portrait created with flowers — commemorating her life. It will accompany 59 other floragraphs honoring organ donors on the 2011 Donate Life Rose Parade float.
Katya’s transplanted organs also spawned the Donate Life flag program, in which hospitals across the nation raise a flag for one week in honor of a family that decides to donate their child’s organs, LaGree said. The flag is then given to the family. The first flag dedication ever performed was done in honor of Katya and the Todesco family in 2008.
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