AURORA, Colo. — By the time Audrey Hudecek was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a liver disease, it was too late to wait for a deceased donor.
Audrey, a 4-month-old baby in Tucson, Arizona, needed a liver as soon as possible.
"When we first found out, it went from this devastating numbing -- not sure how to respond, our whole world was turned upside down in a moment -- to potentially I could be a part of a solution to save my daughter’s life," said John Hudecek, Audrey's dad.
There is no pediatric liver transplant center where they live, so they traveled to Colorado where Audrey could be a patient at Children's Hospital Colorado.
"She was at a Stage 4 at four months old, which normally is something that would take an entire lifetime -- let's say, if someone was heavy drinking their entire lifetime," John said.
The decision to be the person to give her a new liver was easy.
His wife, Karin, had struggled to get pregnant, and they were ready to fight for their miracle baby.
On June 22 last year, John was in a surgery room next door at UCHealth waiting for doctors to remove a baby-sized piece of his liver to give to Audrey, who was waiting in a surgery room at Children's.
"I think I was out before I counted to like three, and then when I woke up, I was just happy that they said everything went well and that was all I needed to hear," John said, choking up. "It was just an amazing feeling.”
On Thursday morning, the family was back in Colorado for annual check-ups nearly a year after the liver donation.
"To see her today running around and laughing and even throwing tantrums, being cranky before a procedure, she’s just a normal girl running around living her life, so I’m just so thankful for that," John said.
Audrey had an appointment with Dr. Dania Brigham, a pediatric transplant hepatologist at Children's Hospital Colorado.
Her mission is to bring down the mortality rate of kids who die waiting for a deceased liver donor, when they could receive a living one.
She said John's liver regenerates to its normal size in six to eight weeks, and so does Audrey's new piece.
"In 2021 we did 20 pediatric liver transplants here, and 12 of those were living donations, so more than half," Brigham said.
She added that five of those were complete strangers.
Anyone can sign up to be a living donor through UCHealth's donor portal. People who agree to donate a piece of their liver will be giving it to a kid at Children's Hospital Colorado.
Audrey is now 19 months old and wore a shirt to her doctor's appointments that read "my dad is my HERO."
"To think that I could be a critical part in saving my daughter’s life, probably the first time in my life I felt like heroic," John said.
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