Transplant milestone

Aislynn Collins was not quite 6 months old when doctors told her parents she was in trouble. The baby had a vascular tumor that probably wasn't cancerous but was life-threatening, anyway.

Over the next two months, doctors gave her steroids, which didn't work, and then chemotherapy, which was equally ineffective to retard the growth of the blood-vessel tumor in her liver. She was literally "out of room" as the hemangioendothelioma kept growing, making it hard to breathe and posing the risk of heart failure.

On Sept. 12, Aislynn, now 9 months old, became the 100th child to receive a liver transplant at Primary Children's Medical Center. Tuesday afternoon she was to leave the hospital, safely cradled in the arms of the man who saved her life — dad Nathan Collins, a West Jordan policeman.

He donated the left lateral segment that makes up about a third of his own liver.

"I'm thankful I was able to be such a good match and help my daughter out," he said, choking with emotion a couple of times. "In this type of situation, you feel so helpless."

His part of their joint surgery lasted four hours, hers five hours. Nathan Collins spent six days in Primary (joking he was among the oldest patients in the pediatric hospital), while Aislynn's recuperation has taken about two weeks. Dad's not completely healed yet. He still feels "bent over" and feels a pull when he straightens up. But they're both doing well.

Within a couple of months, his liver will regrow and regenerate to close to its normal size. Her new liver will grow as she does. And although she'll need anti-rejection drugs, the transplant seems to promise long life to an infant who might otherwise have died.

Tuesday, Primary Children's held a news conference to celebrate its milestone: 100 transplants over the course of the 10-year-old program, which has a remarkable 90-percent-plus survival rate among its organ recipients. Aislynn's transplant was only the 16th live-donor liver transplant performed at the hospital.

As Nathan Collins hugged his wife, Shante, Aislynn sat quietly in her mom's arms, watching the cameras that surrounded her and holding hands with Dr. Linda Book, her physician and the medical director of the hospital's liver transplant program. The baby was too busy taking in her surroundings to care that she is a living piece of the hospital's history.

To the doctors, though, the milestone is important.