Family seeks liver transplant donors to save 9-month-old baby’s life
By Breana Ross
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BALTIMORE, Maryland (WBAL) — A family is asking for help to save their baby girl’s life.
Desire Murdock is just 9 months old. She’s a wide-eyed baby girl with a big smile and her whole life ahead of her, but the start of her life has been harder than most. Her mom, Shanell Hunt, noticed something was wrong when Desire was just 3 months old.
“She was yellow, more yellow than normal,” Hunt said.
Hunt took her baby girl to an emergency room for testing in July. When doctors couldn’t find the problem, they sent her home. In November, Hunt found herself at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center as Desire suffered from more complications with her liver. Then, she received news no parent wants to hear: Desire needs a liver transplant.
“It’s just devastating,” Hunt said. “The rest of my children are healthy, so it’s kind of hard for me to go through that with my baby, a baby at that.”
Desire has been in the hospital since November with blocked bile ducts, but doctors are not sure why. They just know she needs a new liver fast.
“She’s been on the list for quite some time, and we would like to get her transplant in the next month,” said Dr. Kathryn Smith, the medical director of pediatric liver transplants at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. “She just continues to get sicker while we wait. If she does not get a liver transplant, she will die.”
Hunt hopes someone will consider being a living donor.
“I can’t give it to her,” Hunt said. “I wish I could.”
The process involves testing to determine blood type and size. For a person who’s a match, doctors will take a small piece of the liver to give to Desire.
“If you take a piece of the liver and you put it into a baby, (it) will regenerate quickly within a matter of weeks to months, and the piece that we put in Desire also grows into a large liver, and that liver grows with her,” Smith said.
Donating a small piece of liver could give Desire a shot at a big future.
“Just think about the life that you could give her,” Hunt said.
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