Bianca's heart: A mother's intuition leads doctors to save toddler's life via transplant

SAVAGE, Minn. – It all started on a March Minnesota day. The Gozola sisters were hard at play. It was cold, but not really cold.

"I remember…standing there with the other parents and going, 'The other kids don't have blue lips like Bianca does,'" said mother Laura Gozola.

Laura's maternal instincts kicked in. Between that and Bianca's lingering cold, something was off. It turns out it was way off. Her doctor confirmed it.

"I remember her relaying the information in the gentlest way that she possibly could, but I felt my jaw just drop at how bad it was," she said.

Dr. Rebecca Ameduri is the medical director of Mayo Clinic's Pediatric Heart Transplant Program.

"Bianca had a diagnosis of something called restrictive cardiomyopathy, which is something that she was born with where the heart muscle is abnormal and it doesn't relax normally," Dr. Ameduri said.

"I think they said like 25 doctors [were] on a call or in a meeting to talk about how best to safely care for her and what to do, and they said that meeting lasted for like 45 minutes," Laura said.

A new heart was her only hope, but she was too sick to get one. The pressure from her own heart should have been about 1 to 2, but it was at 19.

"Because of how high her pressures were and how severe it was, we couldn't go straight to heart transplantation. We needed to do something called a VAD, or a ventricular assist device, to help her out as a bridge to transplant," Dr. Ameduri said.

She had to move into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, leaving behind her baby brother, and her worried older sister, Fiona.  

"It made me feel nervous," Fiona said.

And it made her parents feel awful.

"We sat right in here and told them this is it, she's not coming home until she gets the heart," Laura said. "And so that was the hard thing, saying goodbye and ripping our family apart."

And after they got settled, things got worse.

"I had to watch them put the paddles on here for a second time, which is probably the most traumatic thing that I saw in the entire nine months was just her heart stop," she said.

Machines were taking on the work of her lungs and heart. For months, they waited with hope, and dread.

"That was something that we struggled with every day leading up to the transplant is just knowing that for our daughter to live, something else was gonna have to happen. Another child would have to die," said father Nick Gozola.

Meanwhile, Bianca kept fighting, making the most of her cumbersome situation.

"I answered the phone and the very first thing she said to me was, 'I have some good news for you. We just accepted a heart for Bianca,'" Laura said. "Everything that we had been waiting for."

"That was the best day of our lives. The day I met Laura, the day we got married, the kids being born are all amazing days," Nick said. "But being able to fully, finally complete our family with Bianca's transplant, best day of our lives."

And three months later, there was another day to cherish. Bianca made it home two days before Christmas.

"Everything that I wanted couldn't be wrapped, and I got it all," Laura said. "I got everything I wanted." 

Thanks to a gift, that came at the greatest of cost, to provide the greatest of joy. 

"We can't thank that family enough for, in the hardest time, choosing life, choosing to donate their children's organs, because they saved our daughter's life," Laura said. 

Bianca had another surgery and had her stomach tube removed. The goal is for her to keep building up her resistance and start preschool in the fall.