Loved ones mourn loss of Nataline
GLENDALE — A week and a day after Nataline Sarkisyan was taken off life support, about 250 mourners gathered Friday at St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church and then Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills for the 17-year-old Northridge resident’s funeral.
Thousands of roses and colored carnations molded into decorative sculptures sat behind Nataline’s white coffin, which was flanked by many of the same friends, family and well-wishers who protested outside Cigna HealthCare’s Glendale office last week, urging the company to reverse its decision to deny a doctor-recommended and potentially life-saving liver transplant.
Minutes after the protest, the insurance company changed course and promised to cover the transplant, but it was too late. Nataline’s condition took a turn for the worse, and her family took her off life support at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital hours after the protest.
A flower sculpture made to look like a clock — pink carnations were situated as numerals around an otherwise white leafy circle — was set at 5:50 p.m., the minute on Dec. 20 that the Sarkisyan family lost an aspiring fashion designer, devoted Armenian activist, trained dancer and budding chef.
And even as Nataline toiled through her bout with leukemia, going back and forth from home to the doctor’s office for chemotherapy and check-ups while battling recurrent sickness, she didn’t complain, said Bedig Sarkisyan, 21, Nataline’s brother and only sibling.
“Her last year, she lived her life in a way she didn’t believe she was sick,” he said. “She went in and got her driver’s license and never even got a chance to drive her car, but she still got it anyways. Even when she was with her friends, they never looked at her as sick. . . . They never saw what we saw, like, when she was in the hospital. That was really bad.”
Sarkisyan underwent bone marrow transplant surgery on Nov. 21 to help his ailing sister.
The transplant was successful, but complications from the surgery and ensuing chemotherapy caused her liver and other organs to fail.
On Dec. 10, Nataline’s doctors sought to give her a liver transplant, but Cigna denied the coverage, calling the surgery “experimental,” given Nataline’s critical condition.
The day after Nataline died, the family’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said he would file a civil suit against Cigna and push for criminal charges.
The dozens of television news cameras that lined the back row of the church Friday were signs that, while Nataline has passed, the circumstances that surrounded her death are likely to keep the teen’s name on the tongues of lawyers, lawmakers and media reporters well into the future.
It’s a legacy that Nataline’s mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, plans to invoke in years to come as she plans to become a devoted activist for healthcare reform and urge everyone she meets to register as an organ donor, she said.
“I’m going to focus on helping other kids and families not to go through what I went through,” she said. “I’m going to get the word out. I’m going to save a life. We’re going to deliver her wishes.”
RYAN VAILLANCOURT covers business, politics and the foothills. He may be reached at (818) 637-3215 or by e-mail at ryan.vaillancourt@latimes.com.