They share the same smile, the same sense of humor -- and now, the same liver.
"I remember I was thinking at the beginning, this is crazy!" Lilian Chow told Ivanhoe. "This is like science fiction that this can't actually work!"
Lilian's daughter Lila was born with a disease that damaged her liver. Surgery at two months didn't fix the problem, so she needed a transplant. Her dad Jim was first in line to donate.
"Number one, Lilian had already suffered through the delivery, so I figured let me get a hole cut in me," Jim told Ivanhoe. "It's my turn, my turn for some pain."
They turned to Dr. Benjamin Samstein, who is one of the first surgeons in the United States to perform a minimally invasive liver transplant from adult to child.
"There's one center in Korea performing this, and the procedure was developed in France," Dr. Samstein, surgical director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia in New York, told Ivanhoe.
Instead of a 25-centimeter cut from chest to belly button, surgeons make five 1-inch cuts across the donor's stomach and one small cut across the lower abdomen to retrieve the organ.
"We basically place a bag inside put the liver piece in the bag pull the bag out, then quickly bring the liver over to the baby," Dr. Samstein explained.
Fifteen percent of Jim's liver is now growing and thriving in his daughter.
"Her eyes started clearing," Jim said. "Her face started clearing. The jaundice went away."
Jim responded well, too. Instead of the traditional transplant where donors spend six weeks laid up, Jim was back on his feet in about two weeks -- especially important for a family dealing with two patients.
"Between the two surgeries, it's all a fog," wife Lilian said. "It's very stressful."
Lila doesn't miss a beat, but her dad will always remind her, she's carrying around a piece of him.
"It's good leverage for when she's a teenager: 'Well, you know I can always take it back!'"
The piece of liver will grow as Lila grows, and it should be normal size when she's adult. Surgeons say patients who receive livers from a living donor do better but only 5 percent of liver transplants use this method because it takes such a toll on the donor. Doctors hope offering a minimally-invasive approach will lead to more living donors.
