80 Nurses Rally to Save Baby Girl Who Needed Liver Transplant

Nine-month-old Mattie Beacham was in a coma; her organs were shutting down, and her little body was fighting a battle that seemed insurmountable. She needed a liver transplant, but was too sick to even get on the waiting list. For the nurses in the AdventHealth for Children pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU), it became their mission to save her.

“There were several nurses that we could tell were emotionally connected to Mattie and were willing to fight with us,” said Mattie’s dad, Michael Beacham.

When Michael and Allison Beacham brought Mattie to AdventHealth for Children in Orlando—the only pediatric liver transplant program in central Florida—she was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disease that affects newborns, and causes bile to build up and destroy the liver.

“The first couple months we thought everything was fine. It wasn’t; we just didn’t know,” Michael said. “Our daughter was small; our daughter was jaundiced. We didn’t know any better, and we were at a different hospital system and nobody noticed it.”

Regino Gonzalez-Peralta, the pediatric transplant surgeon on Mattie’s case, explained that about 80 percent of infants with the disease will eventually need a liver transplant.

“She just needed a liver, but we had to get her to the point where she could get a liver,” said Niki Sapp, one of the nurses who cared for Mattie.

Some days Mattie seemed to be getting better. Then she nosedived—she went into organ failure, into a coma, and finally her heart stopped, sending the entire team of physicians, nurses, and other clinicians into Mattie’s room.

“When your child codes and you see 20 people rush into the room to perform CPR, no one should ever see that. They came in with a chaplain, sat down, and said she won’t make it four hours,” Michael recalled. “But four hours later she was still there, and we owed her to fight as long as she was fighting. We just stayed by that bed and prayed that things would stabilize.”

The team was able to stabilize her.

“It really tested us as a PICU. But if there’s something we can do, we’re going to try, and sometimes that one treatment that we’ve never done is what is going to save their life,” Sapp said. “It makes me proud that I chose the career that I did, that I’m a nurse.”

For the 180 days that Mattie was in the hospital, every one of the 80 nurses who work in the pediatric intensive-care unit cared for Mattie, bit by bit getting her healthier to get a transplant.

Her unique case and her and her parents’ fighting spirit pushed them to try treatments they had never done before—treatments that have now become standard care with other kids.

“Mattie really left this legacy and pushed how we care for these patients to the forefront of what we do at AdventHealth for Children,” said Amanda Hellner, the unit’s nurse educator at the time.

Finally Mattie was stable enough to get back on the transplant list.

After 10 hours of surgery, she had a successful liver transplant.

“I was here when her mom was in the room and Mattie opened her eyes for the first time. It’s just one of the moments you live for as a nurse, and that was one that I’ll never forget,” said Amanda Hellner, the unit’s nurse educator at the time. “I’ll carry that always with me in my career. She’s become part of my why.”

Mattie turned 2 in December.

The original version of this story was posted on the AdventHealth news site.