By Clint O'Connor Plain Dealer Reporter
This article appeared in the Feb. 12 Cleveland Plain Dealer. It is reprinted with permission from The Plain Dealer.
CLEVELAND, Ohio--Juanita Legere came to Cleveland to save two lives: her own and her unborn child's. But she didn't know that at the time.
When an ambulance took her on Jan. 20 from Ashtabula County Medical Center to University Hospitals of Cleveland, doctors weren't sure what was sapping her energy.
Tests soon revealed that the 25-year-old Legere, who was 28 weeks pregnant, had a failing liver. It was not clear how long it would hold out, if the doctors should deliver the baby prematurely or if Legere would need a new liver.
Since then, she has slipped in and out of two semi-comas, given birth to a daughter and had a liver transplant.
"It's just amazing," said Legere, recovering yesterday in her hospital room with husband David nearby. "It's a miracle. That's how I see it--a miracle."
When doctors realized the severity of her liver problem, they made Legere Status 1--the designation for the most seriously ill--on the United Network for Organ Sharing on Jan 23. Soon after, she fell into a semi-coma.
Dr. Richard Sterling, a liver specialist, and Dr. David Mulligan, a transplant surgeon, debated their options as they monitored Legere in the intensive care unit and tried to communicate with her. They had to decide what to do about the baby.
Then the unexpected: Legere went into labor.
"God decided for us," said Mulligan. "Boom. Here's the baby, and you can do the transplant later."
Kelly Nicole, weighing 2 pounds, 9 ounces and measuring 15 inches, was delivered vaginally on Jan. 30 in the hospital's intensive care unit.
"The room was packed," said Sterling, "about 20 people. The OB-gyn team was there, the neonatal team, the liver transplant team."
Legere said she was in a fog during her semi-coma, but she woke up for the delivery. "I remember that," she said, her eyes brightening. "One push and she was out."
She then lapsed into a second semi-coma, and her condition worsened.
On Feb. 4, a liver donor surfaced: an Ohio woman the same age and blood type as Legere who had suffered severe brain trauma in an accident.
Mulligan performed the transplant the next day, in three hours and 24 minutes. "Her old liver had just completely collapsed," he said. "She was not far from having total shutdown."
Sterling said, "She probably would have died within a day."
They still do not know what caused her liver failure.
The hospital has 40 patients waiting for new livers, Mulligan said.
Legere's case took priority because she was the closest to death.
Legere's prognosis is excellent, according to Mulligan. She may go home as early as Friday. She and her husband David, who works for Lincoln Electric Co. in Mentor, said they were grateful to all of the people who have sent cards and who prayed for them.
Kelly's outlook is also bright, according to doctors. She is in the neonatal intensive care unit at the adjacent Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital.
Born at 29 weeks (about 10 weeks premature), Kelly now weighs 3 pounds, 1 ounce and is 15 inches long. She is in an incubator isolette and drinks formula every two hours. Depending on her size and strength, she could go home to join brothers Ethan, 5, and Tyler, 3, at their home in Ashtabula County's Kingsville Township by the end of March.
When Juanita and David visited Kelly yesterday, there were a lot of thanks for answered prayers.
"Luckily, and with her guardian angel," said Sterling, "we were able to give her a new life, and a new baby."
March 18, 1997, WN, page 12
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