The parents of a 10-year old girl dying from cystic fibrosis are fighting national organ-donation rules that give priority to adults in need of lung donations, according to FOX News.
Sarah Murnaghan has only weeks left to live and is eligible for donor lungs, but due to her age can only receive them after all adult candidates, regardless of the severity of their condition, have the chance to receive them first.
Sarah was born with cystic fibrosis, and for the past several months her lungs have been deteriorating rapidly, CNN reports. She has less than five weeks left to live, according to her mother, Janet Murnaghan, who says her daughter who has spent her life in and out of hospitals is aware that she is sick, just now sick.
"I'm not going to tell her she's dying, because she's 10," Janet told CNN. "I'm going to tell her we're going to keep fighting. I don't want to scare her."
School is one of the things Sarah misses the most about life outside of her hospital environment.
"I used to go to school before I got oxygen," Sarah told CNN. "Got to go to school and at least try and act like all the other normal children."
"She may feel like she's kind of sinking,"Janet said. "As she said, what you can do...is kind of brush off the sand, or if you need to get a new boat, kind of start over, which would be a transplant, to get a new set of lungs, so she'd be clean again."
As pediatric lungs are rare, the Murgnaghan family thought their daughter would get a shot at a lung transplant when she made the list of adults, but soon after they found out the national organ rule preventing their daughter from getting priority.
"We're starting to face the fact that, you know, she may not make it. And that we're sitting here with weeks," said Janet Murnaghan to Fox affiliate WTXF.
"Since we really have gotten to understand the rules of all of this in the last week or two, it's really driven us to speak out," said Sarah's father, Fran Murnaghan, to WTXF.
The Murgnaghans have created and are circulating an online petition on Change.org to John Roberts, President, Board of Directors of the OPTN/UNOS Lung Review Board, a national group of transplant physicians and surgeons. The petition calls for a change in policy to allow their daughter a lung transplant based on her medical necessity.
"Please reconsider the policy that excludes children under 12 from receiving adult lungs based on medical necessity," the petition reads. "And we implore you to start by making an immediate exception for 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who has been on the lung transplant waiting list for 18 months. UNOS policy requires adult lungs to be offered first to adults in less dire need than Sarah. Please treat her life as equal to an adult's life. She doesn't have much more time and needs new lungs now. Please give her the chance to receive the adult lungs she needs to save her life."
Family, friends, and over 17,000 have signed the petition so far, with over 7,000 more signatures currently needed.
"The only thing standing between my daughter living and my daughter dying is the fact that she's 10 and not 12," Kanet Murnaghan said. "That's unreal to me."
"I want to be famous and be on stage and sing and dance, and play my xylophone," the young girl told the station when speaking of her dreams for the future. Her mother says if she gets a new pair of lungs in the next few weeks, she could make her dream a reality.
