Five Organ Transplant Gives Young Woman Happy New Year

The Daily News ends the year on an uplifting note, putting a young Brooklyn woman who survived a rare five-organ transplant surgery on the cover this morning. 22-year-old Kristin Molini is eating real food for the first time since 2005, when her rare medical condition, intestinal dysmotility, intensified. The malady paralyzed her digestive organs, and she had to rely on an IV feed that destroyed her liver. "The first thing I ate was a piece of saltine cracker and a Cheerio, and that was like, 'Oh, my God!'" Molini tells the News. "You start out [eating] like a baby, but you're like a kid in a candy shop."

It was a long road to get to this point for Molini. She had been on organ donation lists for years, but her rare blood type made it difficult to find a match. In May, the call finally came: The family of a 6-year-old Mississippi boy, killed by "a traumatic injury," would donate the new liver, stomach, pancreas and large and small intestine she needed. Molini was rushed into surgery that same night. "It was probably the longest, most emotional day of my life. I was crying, I was bawling," Molini says. "I didn't know if I was going to wake up. As I'm rolling away from my family, I'm just saying goodbye, and I'm crying. And I see this little cooler come in and I'm like, 'Oh yeah, that's for me.'"

The operation took 13 hours at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, where a team of three surgeons, two anesthesiologists, and four nurses performed the rare all-night surgery, cutting open Molini's abdomen, severing her organs one by one and then lifting them all out at once. They then replaced them with organs from the donor. Only 300 such "multivisceral transplantations" have been performed worldwide since the 1980s, the News reports. Molini's now up to 80 pounds and says she's going out for New Year's Eve: "I'm stoked about that. I never got dressed up. I lived in my pajamas....I never lived that 18-, 19-, 20-year-old life.
I get to plan my life now. I don't know what the future holds, and that's the fun part... Before, I didn't even know if I had a future."

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By John Del Signore in News on December 31, 2009 9:48 AM

Comments [rss]

FelixtheCat & Christine Quinn'

We should have an opt out organ donor program as some other countries do and have proven successful.

Jesse

The best to her :)

potsmoker

she looks better with a tan in the smaller picture.

potsmoker

i would never donate my organs, ever.

i saw that movie COMA when i was a kid, its a true story.

by the way what country recently admitted to executing prisoners and civilians to harvest their organs...come on guess...

maybe pot is making me paranoid, but putting yourself on a organ donation list is a sure way to garantee something strange will happen to you so they can get your organs.

Spirit of 76

Don't worry. You're safe. With the damage you've done to your DNA with all that pot and the carcinongenic PAH in the smoke, nobody would want your organs.

Spirit of 76

*carcinogenic

mvtransplantgirl

lol! I agree Spirit of 76

mvtransplantgirl

You seriously cant be that dumb can you? If ignorance was a medical condition then you would be disabled

mvtransplantgirl

Good luck Kristin! Ive had two Multi-Visceral Transplants myself so i know its hard to go through it all emotionally and physically. Hope your New Year is great! To all the idiot people on here commenting about her looks I think you are sick. She has gone through more than most will go through in a life time already so seriously a little respect is in order here, and if you dont have any respect then perhaps you should look into a brain transplant.

LIFESHARERS

Kristin Molini was very lucky to get a 5-organ transplant. At least 9,000 of the 105,000 Americans on the national waiting list will die before they get a transplant. Most of these deaths are needless. Americans bury or cremate 20,000 transplantable organs every year.

There is a simple way to put a big dent in the organ shortage – give donated organs first to people who have agreed to donate their own organs when they die.

Giving organs first to organ donors will convince more people to register as organ donors. It will also make the organ allocation system fairer. People who aren't prepared to share the gift of life should go to the back of the transplant waiting list as long as there is a shortage of organs.

Anyone who wants to donate their organs to others who have agreed to donate theirs can join LifeSharers. LifeSharers is a non-profit network of organ donors who agree to offer their organs first to other organ donors when they die. Membership is free at www.lifesharers.org or by calling 1-888-ORGAN88. There is no age limit, parents can enroll their minor children, and no one is excluded due to any pre-existing medical condition. LifeSharers has over 13,400 members, including 751 members in New York.

Please contact me - Dave Undis, Executive Director of LifeSharers - if your readers would like to learn more about our innovative approach to increasing the number of organ donors. I can arrange interviews with some of our local members if you're interested. My email address is daveundis@lifesharers.org. My phone number is 615-351-8622.

mvtransplantgirl

I know the shortage is servere but im just not sure this is the answer to going about donation. I was a donor before I recieved my two multi-visceral transplants but honestly I dont think i would have cared if someone got my organs who wasnt a donor themselves. Some people arnt aware and need educated and who are we to say who gets what and when? im not going to say "yeah ill donate organs....IF you are willing to donate yours to me if i should need them too" Donation is a selfless act so it seems this way makes it greedy. I do applaud your effort to get ppl to sign up to donate but I would hope those ppl would do it cause they care about a single human life not because they know in return if need be they would get something out of it.

NannyState

Did they remember to remove the frozen giblet pack before operating on her?

Jen S

Can't believe people are shallow enough to rag on her looks. The girl has been dying for years - be a human!

potsmoker

if you think a snese of decency could be transplanted.

send yours to the lawmakers, cops, judges, policians and media who would claim this woman deserves to be in jail if she grew her own pot to relieve teh symptoms of her medical issues.