Four-year-old Kallie Finn and her daddy are two of a kind.
"We're real close anyway, she's always been my little buddy," Mitch Finn, Kallie's father, told Action News.
When Mitch Finn was 5 years old, he had to have a heart transplant. This year, he learned Kallie's heart was failing, and she would need one, too.
"It was sick," Kallie said.
A ventricular assist device kept Kallie alive for weeks, but the clock was ticking.
"Essentially three times as many kids die on a waiting list compared to adults," Pirooz Eghtesady, MD, PhD, Chief Section of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and Co-Director of the Heart Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, explained.
Kallie's cardiac surgeon made a surprising call. He decided to give her a donor heart other centers had rejected, a heart with a hole in it. Holes in hearts are congenital defects that change the normal flow of blood through the heart. Treatment for the condition has greatly improved over the last few decade, and kids who have it can survive to adulthood.
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