Donating Life

Circle Of

In her second life-saving transplant,
Ann Arbor girl gets heart of young boy.

Julia
Strecher

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer

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1 hile 9-year-old Julia Strecher lay in her
hospital bed Sept. 6, her small body
rejecting its transplanted heart, Jeri
Rosenberg and Victor Strecher focused
on her doctors' warning that their daughter was
probably going to die.
They paced the hallways of C.S. Mott Children's
Hospital in their hOmetown of Ann Arbor discussing
what might happen and what to do next.
"She had been resuscitated six times in 2 1 /2
hours," said Rosenberg. "A lot of that time there was
a lack of oxygen. The doctors said they couldn't con-
trol the heart attacks and didn't think she could sur-
vive another one."
For the couple, the next step was automatic. "I imme-
diately asked if we coulddonate her organs," recalled
Rosenberg, knowing what it meant to them when
another family did the same for Julia eight years before.

A Second Chance

Born with a healthy heart, Julia contracted a virus at
age 9 months while in Denmark with her parents.

12/22
2000

.

"They were told to take the
baby back home to die," recalled
Julia's grandmother, Marilyn
Solomon. Living in North Carolina
at the time, the family sought out
heart specialists there.
When it was determined a heart
transplant could save Julia's life, her name
was put on an organ donor list, where it
remained for four months.
"On Valentine's Day [1992], they got the call,"
said Solomon, who, with her husband Bob, traveled
from their West Bloomfield home to be with the
family after the successful surgery.
"Julia's-sister Rachael [then 6] went to school that
day and told her class that her sister got a heart for
Valentine's Day," recalled Julia's great-aunt, Sharon
Gutman Baker of Walled Lake.
This past summer, Julia's body began to reject its
transplanted heart. As devastating as the news was, it
was not entirely unexpected.
"We always knew she might need another heart,"
her mother said.
Julia's name was placed on an organ transplant list
in July, but she became critically ill in August and
was admitted to Mott Children's Hospital.
After a tentative month, "we were called to the
hospital one day and she was on life support,"
Solomon said. "We thought she was gone this time."
Then, what the family can only describe as a mira-
cle occurred. "I was holding her hand when she
jerked away from me and there was a tear in her
eye," Baker said.
The neurologist says it was involuntary jerking,
but they noticed she was trying to communicate.
"She squeezed her father's hand five times when he
made the Roman numeral 'V' with his fingers,"
Rosenberg said. Doctors went to work, and found_
no damage. "They were shaking their heads," she
says. "No one expected it."
Julia remained in the intensive care unit, still on
the transplant list. Exactly one week later, on Sept.

13, a heart became available and was successfully
transplanted.

From Child To Child

Her mother says she understands the immense gift
bestowed upon her family meant a child, similar in
weight to Julia, had to have died. The family was
told only that the heart came from a young Grand
Rapids boy who died after a hit-and-run accident
while riding his bicycle to school.
"Now this child lives on," Rosenberg said. "Not
only his heart, but other organs that were also trans-
planted."
She plans to write a letter to the donor's family,
sending it to the Organ Procurement Agency in Ann
Arbor, which will forward it. She did the same with
the family of the donor of Julia's first transplanted
heart, through a North Carolina organization.
Amazingly, Julia was back in school just six weeks
after her heart transplant surgery.
Rosenberg says the small, new heart will grow
with Julia and she is hopeful medication will reduce
the possibilities of the coronary artery disease com-
mon to heart transplant patients. Still, she knows
there is a good chance Julia will need another new
heart in the future.
"I had never thought about donation before. I
didn't know if it was allowed in the Jewish religion,"
said her grandmother Marilyn Solomon.
For Rosenberg, always aware of the benefits of
organ transplantation, the experience only reinforced
her belief.
"I feel really strongly that if you can give someone
a chance of life, you are totally duty-bound to do it.
Without a transplant, Julia couldn't have lived long
at all," she said.
The young girl whom her mother calls "so strong
— just like a hero," will participate in one of the
most life-affirming rights this weekend
celebrat-
ing her birthday. Because of the miraculous gift she
received from a child she will never know, Julia
Strecher turns 10 on Saturday, Dec. 23. Ei

