New organs forge new friendship after transplants
A suburban Detroit woman and South Side Chicago man are recovering in a Chicago hospital following rare triple transplant surgeries that gave them the healthy heart, liver and kidney each needed – and a new friendship.
University of Chicago Medicine doctors announced on Friday that they successfully completed the triple organ transplants on Sarah McPharlin, a 29-year-old woman of Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, and Daru Smith, a 29-year-old father from Chicago’s South Side, within 30 hours of one another.
McPharlin had two transplants cancelled earlier in the year, pushing her surgery back.
“Maybe because it’s only luck that both of those transplants were supposed to be at the same time,” Nir Uriel, the director of heart failure, transplant and mechanical circulatory support for the hospital, said on Friday.
Just eight minutes after a medical team finished Smith’s liver transplant on Dec 20, hospital staff learned that donor organs were available for McPharlin.
“It’s been mind-blowing and amazing, having someone go through the process with me, gave me more motivation,” Smith, a truck driver, said during a video interview.
The pair, who are recovering on the same hospital floor, share walks and give each other high-fives when they pass one another in the hallways.
Nurses say they notice a difference in recovery for the two compared to other transplant patients, because they have gone through the same debilitating surgery together.