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Transplant unites families in Texas, Mass.

Print | Comments () Posted by Chelsea Conaboy April 27, 2011 05:23 PM

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By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

As they sat waiting for doctors at Children's Hospital Boston to replace their daughter's mechanical heart with a donated one, Mike and Cheryl Toole of Hopkinton wondered about the family that had lost a child to make the procedure possible.

Their daughter, Avery, then 5, was born with an underdeveloped heart. Doctors had operated on her at five days old. But that surgery and eight more did not correct the problem. In March 2009, Avery went into cardiac arrest. Doctors put her on the experimental heart-assist device and added her to the list of people waiting for a transplant. On Aug. 6, the Tooles, who are featured this week in a TV news series, learned there was a match.

Organ donations like this one typically are anonymous. But as Avery was undergoing what would be an 18-hour operation, the Tooles searched the Internet for stories of people who could have been a donor. They came upon a photo of 8-year-old Dalton Lawyer, a boy from College Station, Texas, who was struck and killed while riding his bike during a visit to Ohio.

"There was just this sixth sense, this instant feeling that this was the little boy," Cheryl Toole, a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's, said in an interview.

Of course, they couldn't be sure then. But when the Tooles sent a letter to the donor family through the national organ network, Dalton's family wrote back.

Today, Avery is a rosy-cheeked 7-year-old who will play in her first T-ball game this weekend. The Lawyers and the Tooles talk regularly and have visited twice. Toole said they enjoy a bond that "is anything but average and normal."

Yet, she said, "we can sit on each others' couches and just hang out and literally share our families."

The Tooles talk about Dalton often -- Avery, especially.

"She knows there was this little boy, Dalton, who gave her his heart," her mother said. "He didn't need it anymore. He needed to go to heaven."

Meredith Stancik, a reporter with CBS-affiliate KBTX has been telling the story of the two families in a four-part series. Above is a version of the story from Children's Hospital Boston.

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About white coat notes

White Coat Notes covers the latest from the health care industry, hospitals, doctors offices, labs, insurers, and the corridors of government. Chelsea Conaboy previously covered health care for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write her at cconaboy@boston.com. Follow her on Twitter: @cconaboy.

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