Ben Zion Cohen Mirkov and Olga Cohen Mirkov welcomed what they thought was a healthy baby boy.
“It’s not the first boy that I have, so I feel that something is strange,” Olga Cohen Mirkov said.
Doctors told her Lavi was OK, but a mother knows. At 9 days old, Lave was rushed to the emergency room.
“When we came to the ER, he was very bad,” Cohen Mirkov said. “He was gray, and they take him immediately to the trauma room, because all the organs, it’s fall down.”
Lavi’s bowel was twisted, so doctors rushed him into surgery. A surgery that they warned the parents he likely wouldn’t survive, but he did.
His medical team told them that Lavi, who was also diagnosed with cerebral palsy, would need a five-organ transplant; however, they didn’t have the technology to wait for it in Israel.
“We just have to leave everything in Israel,” Ben Zion said. “We don’t even have time to sell any furniture. We just leave everything there, just like that, and came here flying emergency flight.”
That was three years ago.
Lavi receives long-awaited transplant surgery
“When we came here, he was only 8 months old, and he was only 6.5 kilograms,” Cohen Mirkov said. “So, they told me that they want him to grow a little bit, because it’s a big surgery.”
Doctor Rodrigo Vianna, the director of the Miami Transplant Institute, said it’s the most complicated surgery a person can get. Now, make that person a young child.
“He has no gut, there’s no intestine,” Dr. Vianna said. “So, the spacing is abdomen. It’s very tiny. So usually we have to take donors that are 50%, sometimes even 70%, smaller than the recipient, so you can fit. So if you think about it, if you’re three kilos, you have to find a one kilogram, that doesn’t exist.”
Here on a tourist Visa, the parents couldn’t work. They credit the Jewish community for helping them get to this point.
“I felt so thankful,” Ben Zion said. “I felt so, so thankful that people like coming to us and reach out to us and say, ‘okay, tell us what exactly you need help,’ And you know, everybody help wherever they can.”
Like babysitting for their 4-year-old twins.
“I don’t sleep at home,” Cohen Mirkov said. “I don’t see my twins, like I see them once in a week, once in two weeks, so it’s hard.”
Dr. Vianna said his team did a great job helping Lavi grow for several years, but even then, it’s extremely complicated.
“I still took, like, a five-kilogram donor,” he said. “Was a little baby donor. It’s like, very small, and that was the only reason we could close him (Lavi).”
Road to recovery
Lavi is now in the ICU. He survived an infection, and thankfully, he has not rejected the organs.
“I not really thinking about like, he gonna be like normal kid?” Ben Zion said. “He’s special kid. He have his own special way to be happy, and our our purpose as a parents, to make sure he gonna be happy in his own way.”
Lavi is still only a few months out from surgery, which his doctors said is still a very sensitive and critical time. Once he makes it to that one-year mark, his doctor said that’s when the celebrations really begin, and that Lavi can live a long life.
