heres a related story...... Lori House dreamed last week that an angel came to visit her.
The Moreno Valley woman told her family she knew what it meant: She would soon get the liver donation that doctors said she needed to survive her bout with hepatitis C. They looked at her with a mixture of hope and pity, worried such visions would do nothing but give her false hope -- worried her death would follow all too quickly on the heels of her sister's death from cancer just a year ago.
Then 12-year-old Steven Morales lost his life Sunday to a stray bullet. He was an innocent victim of a drive-by shooting near his Highland Park home, Los Angeles police said.
Steven's parents decided to donate his organs. His liver was deemed a good match for House, and Loma Linda University Medical Center doctors performed a transplant operation Monday, House's relatives said. After more than seven hours of surgery Monday night, the 36-year-old mother of three was in intensive care Tuesday.
House checked into the hospital last month as her complications from the disease worsened. She had been diagnosed six months ago with hepatitis, an infectious condition that causes inflammation of the liver.
"Lori had a very advanced disease," said Dr. Waldo Concepcion, director of the medical center's transplant institute. "There was a lot of pressure in the veins of the liver, and it was a complicated picture for this transplant."
But her prognosis looks good, he said. House could stay in intensive care for a day to a week longer, and will remain hospitalized for about two weeks as doctors make sure there are no signs that she is rejecting the new organ.
House's family hasn't met Morales' family, but they are hoping to soon. They want the Moraleses to know how grateful they are, said Jodi Yanker, House's sister.
Her message to the Moraleses: "Just, thank you," she said through tears. "I'm sure that when my sister wakes up, she'll want to say the same thing to them. I want to give them a great big hug."
House's family has grown sadly used to the emotional highs and lows of disease. One of her sisters beat breast cancer after a double mastectomy a decade ago. Another sister died of breast cancer a year ago next week. In between, her father, Harold Gordon, survived an aneurysm.
"We were just starting to get it together after the loss of my other daughter," said Gordon, a Moreno Valley resident. "We had played what I call the waiting game with her, here at Loma Linda, when she was sick. And now the same thing with this one."
Since House fell ill, her four siblings began worrying which of them could be next, Gordon said. So all of them, ages 21 through 43, rushed to their doctors for physicals and were relieved to get clean bills of health.
Gordon said he's sorry it took the loss of the Moraleses' child to renew hope for his own embattled family.
"I wish I could bring him back," he said. "The angel in her dream -- I believe that's that little boy."
Published 9/2/1998
