This 9-year-old Maltby girl just wants to be like other kids her age. Instead, doctors say she could die.
Katja de Groot was born with a congenital heart disease and had her first open-heart surgery when she was just 6 days old.
Now her heart is failing again. And her parents want to take her to North Carolina for a heart transplant.
Katja can’t fly safely on a commercial plane because of her health. So, her family is hoping to find someone with an airplane, willing to park it here while they wait for the call for her transplant.
It is easy to see the rapport between nine-year-old Katja de Groot and her parents.
A rapport borne, perhaps, from their long struggle just to keep her alive through repeated open-heart surgeries.
“She had her first one when she was six days old, which was her big sister’s eighth birthday,” said Jenn de Groot, her mother. “And then three and a half-ish until her next one. She was three. And then we had five years after that before we had her next surgery.”
Then, four weeks ago, doctors told them Katja’s heart is failing again, that she needs a so-called partial heart transplant.
But the surgeon is in North Carolina. And they are struggling to find a private pilot willing to be on standby to fly Katja there at a moment’s notice. All of it with the aim of making her healthy once again.
“It would have been nice to have had it easier,” said Jori de Groot, her father. “But at the same time, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Because this is my girl.”
His girl is hoping to finally, truly, live.
“Mostly like do all the other stuff that normal kids can do,” said Katja, softly.
You can’t do that? She was asked.
“No.”
Katja’s mother says she has maybe a month or two before she gets really sick. She says they are working with Aero Angel to find a pilot. But so far, they haven’t had any luck.
So, they have started a GoFundMe to help pay for this trip.
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