When Molly Pearce was born 24 years ago with Hirschsprung’s disease, a blockage of the large intestine due to improper muscle movement in the bowel, doctors predicted she wouldn’t live more than one year. Against all odds – and a number of setbacks – she survived.
However, she is now in a hospital bed at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha surviving on machines and fighting for her life. Pearce needs four donor organs to live – a liver, kidney, pancreas and small intestine – and is in need of a deceased donor with type O blood.
Helping her in her quest for a donor is the Flood Sisters Foundation, a NY-based organization started in 2008 after sisters Cynthia, Jennifer and Heather Flood found a kidney donor for their father via Craigslist.
“We function as a non-profit, and people register online with their blood type looking for a donor,” Cynthia Flood, co-founder of the Flood Sisters Foundation told Elevated Existence. “We have donors online and we help match people.”
The foundation also works to educate the public on organ donation and the transplant process online, as well as through fundraising events around the country. So far the group has assisted in seven transplants, and is hoping Pearce will be the eighth.
“We have never worked with a four organ case like this, and have arranged for healers to provide services to her in Nebraska,” Flood said.
Pearce managed her disease with the help of doctors until at the age of 12 when she was given an antibiotic too powerful for her size. The medicine destroyed her small intestine and kidney – putting her on a liquid diet. Then at age 18, she received a small intestine transplant, and her mother donated a kidney, according to a report on CNN.com.
In 2011, Pearce suffered a negative reaction to a blood transfusion, causing widespread intestinal failure, where she had to have both transplants removed, along with her pancreas and liver. By December 2011, she found herself on dialysis in need of four organs.
“I was so depressed that I was telling my mother and everyone that I didn’t want to live anymore,” Pearce told CNN.com in a report. “I just wanted to give up because of how many things had gone wrong. After a few months, I realized I could either die or try to get better – and I at least wanted to try.”
In the past year, Pearce overcame pneumonia, only to be exposed to MRSA, a skin-borne infection, which is common in hospitals and hard to treat. She is now in an isolation room being fed through a tube, and has not eaten solid food since November 2012, the CNN.com report stated.
While she is on a variety of donor lists, the Flood Sisters Foundation is working to open up her case nationwide in hopes that a donor will come forward, perhaps with a terminally ill family member.
If anyone can help or knows someone who would want to donate the organs from a deceased family member with O blood type, please contact the Flood Sisters Foundation at info@floodsisters.org, via the Facebook page set up for Pearce, or through the foundation Web site at www.floodsisters.org.