Triple transplant recipients form friendship By Amanda Seitz
CHICAGO — A suburban Detroit woman and a South Side Chicago man are recovering in a hospital here after rare triple transplant surgeries that gave them the healthy heart, liver and kidney each needed — and a new friendship they never expected.
University of Chicago Medicine doctors announced Friday that they successfully completed the triple organ transplants on Sarah McPharlin, a 29-year-old woman from Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., and Daru Smith, a 29-yearold father from Chicago’s South Side, within 30 hours of one another.
McPharlin had two transplants canceled earlier in 2018, 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 at a news conference Friday. University of Chicago Medicine has performed the most heart-liver-kidney transplants in the world.
Just eight minutes after a medical team finished Smith’s liver transplant Dec. 20, hospital staff learned that donor organs were available for McPharlin. Smith, who finished surgery that day, became only the 16th person in the U.S. to undergo a heart-liver-kidney transplant. And hours later Dec. 21, McPharlin became the 17th. Each surgery required a 22person team, with some staffers working on both patients. The hospital also performed five other organ transplants during that time period.
Smith and McPharlin, who had her first heart transplant at age 12, arrived at the Chicago hospital in November. But neither knew they were both seeking a triple transplant when they first met during pre-therapy sessions ahead of surgery. The sessions were quiet, and patients didn’t share details about their transplants. But McPharlin’s mother, who quit her job as a schoolteacher in Michigan to be with her daughter for treatment, pried out of Smith that he was awaiting the same organs as 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 at the hospital Friday.
The pair, who are recovering on the same hospital floor, share walks and give each other highfives when they pass one another in the hallways. Their families are already planning a dinner together in the city once the two are released and feeling better. Nurses say they notice a difference in recovery for the two when compared with other transplant patients because they have gone through the same unusual and debilitating surgery together.
McPharlin and Smith notice, too.
“It was so cool to know we would be able to see each other progress together,” McPharlin, an occupational therapist, said Friday. “It was really cool to see how Daru was getting up in the hall. And I knew eventually, or pretty soon, I would be doing the same.”