Little Girl Still Waiting To Get On Transplant List

Little Girl Still Waiting To Get On Transplant List

 

• Update: Young Girl Fights To Stay Alive, Awaiting Lung Transplant

• The Fight For Sarah's Life

• Girl's Family Fights National Organ Donor Rule

• Change.org Petition For Family and Friends of Sarah Murnaghan

• Follow Claudia Gomez On Twitter

• Continuing Coverage: Sarah's FightPHILADELPHIA -Time is quickly running out for a little girl in desperate need of a lung transplant.We first brought you this story over the weekend. Two days later, Sarah Murnaghan is still waiting.Her story is going viral because people are outragThere's a list of patients who are waiting for a lung transplant, but you have to be age 12 or older to get on that list. Sarah is only 10. As a result, her chances of survival are greatly diminished.

But she and her family are not going down without a fight.

In her hospital bed, with a ventilator attached to her nose, Sarah still manages to sing: "I won't give up 'til the end, won't ever give up again."

She says she wants to sing and dance on stage when she grows up.

"I want to be famous," she tells her family.

Sarah is getting her wish, but not the way her parents would ever want.  She is becoming famous because of her struggle to stay alive.

"The only thing standing between my daughter living and my daughter dying is the fact that she's 10 and not 12," Sarah's mom Janet Murnaghan told FOX 29 News.

Sarah has cystic fibrosis. And unless she gets a new set of lungs, she will die.

"The clock is ticking for us," Janet Murnaghan explained. "We don't have months, we have weeks here."

But, according to donor rules, she's too young to get on the list to receive adult organs. Transplant candidates need to be 12 or older.

According to a statement from United Network for Organ Sharing, "The biological needs and circumstances of candidates younger than 12 are different from either adolescent or adult candidates."

Sarah's doctors insist adult lungs could save her life. Her parents appealed, but were turned down.

"I can only imagine what it's like to be a parent sitting in the same circumstances, feeling that you could be so close to a solution but working against the clock," Rep. Pat Meehan told FOX 29.

The congressman, a Republican representing Delaware County, wrote a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, asking her to intervene.

"I hope that what I can do is get people at the highest level," Rep. Meehan continued. "We're reaching, as we speak, out to HHS and others. Our belief is that those who are in charge may be able to make an exception to this rule."

As time ticks away, Sarah tries to keep the faith.

"I'm so scared," she admitted to her family. Scared of the lung transplant surgery that would save her life, but already planning for the days after it happens. "I'll run outside with all the other kids," she said with hope.

Sarah is eligible to receive a lung transplant from a child donor, but they are far more rare than adult donors. And so her parents are doing what they can, launching Facebook and Twitter campaigns to promote an online petition to get her on that donor list.