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<\/p>\nKareena’s miracle came in the form of strangers who helped save her life. Today, she’s 25 years old and reunited with the doctor who performed her surgery.<\/p>\n
HOUSTON \u2014 Twenty-five years ago, the Sept. 11 attacks brought air travel across the United States to a standstill. At that time in Houston, six-month-old Kareena was running out of time.<\/p>\n
Kareena\u2019s liver was failing. The transplant she desperately needed was hundreds of miles away in Nashville. Getting it to Houston would require an extraordinary act of courage.<\/p>\n
Today, Kareena is 25 years old and studying law, not surprisingly, with a focus on health policy. But 25 years ago, she was too sick to leave the hospital. Her life depended on a liver that had to somehow make its way from Nashville to Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only a few livers every year that would match her size and blood type,\u201d said Dr. John Goss with Texas Children’s Hospital.<\/p>\n
The transplant offer came on Sept. 10, 2001. Then came Sept. 11.<\/p>\n
As terrorists attacked and flights across the country were grounded, Kareena\u2019s lifesaving transplant was suddenly in jeopardy.<\/p>\n
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“It became apparent that we may not be able to get the liver here,” Goss said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driving from Nashville would take too long. The liver would not survive. Then nine brave volunteers loaded onto a Tennessee Air National Guard C-130 Hercules, an aircraft built to carry soldiers and heavy military equipment. It was cleared to fly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Its cargo was just 10 ounces — a donor liver carried through a sky empty of planes.<\/p>\n
“The pilots that flew this liver here were in the same flight crew of a couple of the American jets that ended up crashing and were taken over,” \u00a0Goss said. “So he was not going to let another bad event happen.”<\/p>\n
The liver arrived at Texas Children’s Hospital. The transplant worked, and Kareena’s life became a gift from a donor family and so many people who refused to let the day end in another life lost.<\/p>\n
“Being told that you’re the subject of this story is both a privilege, but it also comes with a sense of obligation and I want to make the most of the life that so many strangers worked to give me,” Kareena said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kareena may have been too young to know what was happening on 9\/11 25 years ago, but she says the family born from strangers’ actions taught her a valuable lesson.<\/p>\n
“And so you’re saving a life with a transplant,” she said. “It does more than just save one life. It creates so many more.”<\/p>\n
And a reminder for us all, 25 years after our country was shaken — the worst of humanity does not erase the best of it.<\/p>\n
“It shows that the good will always win in the end,” Goss said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a day remembered for the lives stolen by terror, Kareena’s story is also about a life that was saved.<\/p>\n