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There’s a waiting list for a reason. I guarantee that it will be compatible with someone.

Having received a kidney from my brother after six years of dialysis, initially being told I wasn’t transplant eligible at 21, I had a family friend’s parent on my shift at treatment. She needed a liver and a kidney, and received neither.

Many people die waiting for compatible organs. However, they can only travel so far, which is why most transplant centers require that you can arrive at the hospital within 8 hours max.

I am also curious about why Israeli hospitals can’t do this procedure. It may be a time crunch thing, but they wouldn’t transplant her if the new liver was going to be consumed by cancer. That aside, it IS possible to do two transplants with one liver, as that organ regenerates.

This story just doesn’t sound right on several levels. I don’t mean to cast doubt on it if it is indeed true, but it doesn’t seem to add up. I have a hard time believing that a hospital in the U.S. just happened to have a “slot” a week out, for one thing. Where is the donor liver coming from? Are the doctors psychic, and somehow know that a liver will magically become available just in time for next week’s “slot”, or do they already have a liver and they’re just waiting around for someone who can use it, in a week or so? I wasn’t aware that there was excess inventory in the transplant business, just sitting on the shelf waiting for a customer. And how would it be kept viable?…I didn’t think that was possible for more than a few hours, which your personal experience confirms. And are we also expected to believe that this magical liver just happens to be compatible with this little girl’s body? This whole story makes organ transplantation sound like a quick-serve, drive-through, spur of the moment thing, which it most certainly is not.

And as you and others have pointed out, there is no explanation at all for why she couldn’t get the transplant in Israel. Just a quick mention of Israeli doctors inexplicably telling her parents to go to Pittsburgh. And finally, there’s the predictable urgency for people to “donate now”, or the child will die.

Again, if this story is true then I hope they receive everything they need and more to take care of this little girl. But it just has all the earmarks of a donation scam. I truly hope I’m wrong.