Riding a roller coaster. Maybe a trip to the mountains for some skiing.
Those options, previously off-limits because of her health, excite Kathryn Slattery. Her new liver and new heart make the options possible.
But first things first: "I'm excited to sleep in my own bed."
Kathryn, 18, of Lincoln, has been away from home since Dec. 5, when she was hospitalized at Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha to be treated with intravenous antibiotics. She later was transferred to the Nebraska Medical Center, where, on Jan. 10, she was the first person to undergo a heart-liver transplant at the med center.
Kathryn was born with a rare congenital heart defect, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped.
At the time, her parents, Jim and Marilyn Slattery, had three options: do nothing; take their 4.5-pound baby to California for a heart transplant; or put Kathryn, the youngest of their five children, through three heart surgeries.
Kathryn had surgery at one week, six months and 20 months, all at the University of Michigan Medical Center. The surgeries, her dad said, allowed her to live a relatively normal life. She played recreational basketball, volleyball and soccer. She danced.
But the family knew she eventually would have to undergo a heart transplant.
In 2008, Kathryn began having issues with her pancreas. Those eventually led to the removal of her gallbladder in June 2011.
After the surgery, fluids began building up in her abdomen.
On Dec. 1, Kathryn was feeling miserable and called her mom to pick her up from Lincoln Pius X High School, where she's a senior.
She had some fluid removed the next day. Three days later, she was at Children's.
Kathryn went on a transplant list Jan. 5. Five days later, the family learned she would have surgery that day. She went in at 4:30 p.m. and came out 14 hours later.
Since then, she has made rapid progress. She stayed in the intensive care unit for 14 days, moved to a regular hospital floor for eight days and then went to a hotel in the Lied Transplant Center building. On Jan. 28, she celebrated her 18th birthday at the hospital with her friends and family.
She and her parents are thankful for the donor's gift of life and for the skilled work of the team of surgeons. Kathryn plans to be back at school in March and to graduate in May. She plans to enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and study speech pathology.
"It was always our choice where to have the surgery done," Marilyn Slattery said. "There were options, but through meeting the surgeons and the doctors and the teams, the confidence that I felt from them ... that made the decision easy."
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