Suburban Chicago friends celebrate miracles they prayed for: three organ transplants
CHICAGO (CBS) — A life-saving organ transplant is one of the greatest gifts you can receive, but two friends from a small town in Kankakee County said they have three reasons to celebrate that their experience is nothing short of a miracle.
Walking through the halls of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood...
"It's so funny to be coming through here as a visitor instead of a patient."
Recent lung transplant recipient Donna Rattin gets a hand from her husband, but she's here now to lend support to someone else.
"You look wonderful. Oh, sweetheart, I love you. Can I sit next to you?"
For Rattin and recent heart and kidney recipient Erin Stout, it's a moment these two women spent years praying for.
"When you have doctors that tell you that this just doesn't happen, you know you know it's bigger than ourselves," Raittin said.
Both women have spent their lives with health conditions that compelled these transplants, finding each other through church and praying for one another.
They found those prayers answered just days apart on July 5 for Rattin and July 8 for Stout, each waking up in the hospital to find her friend had also been admitted for a life-changing organ donation.
"My daughter actually said, 'Mom, Erin has got her heart. They are doing surgery right now.' And I couldn't be more excited. I was just praising God for that," Rattin said.
"I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. There were times that I was very doubtful. It just seems too good to be true," Stout said.
Rattin and Stout said they leaned on each other in the tough times. Hospital staff said they know the importance of a support group for organ recipients.
Loyola has six transplant programs and structures them in a way where a heart recipient would get to know other heart recipients. But with these women needing a heart and kidney and a lung, it's unlikely they ever would've crossed paths if it weren't for their church.
As Rattin and Stout look toward the future, they said they're focused on their families, and they want their story to bring hope to people still waiting on the list.
On Tuesday morning, Stout found out she was healthy enough to be released to go home to her three young boys.