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Benefit set for 9-year-old awaiting liver transplant

Camila Jasso, 9

ENLARGE PHOTO

Camila Jasso, 9

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 12:56 AM Thursday, April 9, 2009

As a parent, you're always concerned for your children.

You want the best for them. You want them happy and healthy.

We sweat the small stuff. Is our child's hair combed, are they practicing free throws, does their outfit match?

Armando Jasso, a father of a 9-year-old girl, would give his right arm for such trivial concerns.

His daughter, Camila, is fighting for her life. Sure he has bills to pay, appointments to make, prescriptions to pick up, but right now — and who knows how for how long — his No. 1 priority is making sure she celebrates her 10th birthday.

"The doctors have told us she's a walking time bomb," Jasso said Wednesday, April 8, from his home in Salecreek, Tenn., just north of Chattanooga.

Camila, whose grandparents, Chuck and Delilah Patterson, live in Middletown, was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis in mid-January. Doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, where Camila has spent months this year, recommended a lifesaving liver transplant.

Before his daughter, Camila, a third-grader, was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis and told she needed a life-saving liver transplant, Armando Jasso said she was yellow and "real weak."

But she appeared healthy.

Then doctors told the family — Armando, his wife, Tammy, and 13-year-old son, Alex — that the next 24 to 48 hours were "critical" for Camila's survival.

He admits: "We didn't know what was going on."

Now the waiting — and as a parent, that can be the hardest part — begins. Here’s what is heartbreaking about organ transplants — the sicker you become, the higher you move up the list.

Phone rings first for those on their death beds.

"It's a Catch-22," Jasso said. "I know you want a fair system, but it's the most frustrating thing. As a dad, I don't know what to do. You're scared the whole time."

Then he added quietly: "It's frustrating to see your little girl sick."

Jasso said Camila — born Jan. 1, 2000 — has been "a surprise her whole life."

Doctors had told the Jassos they were expecting a boy.

Then, when she was just a few months old, Camila's baby teeth came in, and eventually, they needed capped.

"We're not sure what more she can do to us," her father said.

Then it hit him. She could turn into a typical teenager.

"Wouldn't it be great to have to fight boyfriend problems?" he said. "Wouldn't that be great?"

It sure beats fighting off death.