The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Toddler saves one, gives sight to two

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Monday, Jan 28, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Toddler saves one, gives sight to two

K. Venkateshwarlu

Eighteen-month-old Ishaan died while undergoing treatment for a rare type of
brain tumour

— PHOTO: P. V. SIVAKUMAR

Swati Vedam holds up the photo of her late one-and-half-year-old son Ishaan, whose organs she and her husband Venugopalan Vedam donated, in Hyderabad recently.

HYDERABAD: Putting behind the grief of losing the apple of their eyes, eighteen-month-old Ishaan, to a killer tumour, a courageous city couple donated his eyes and kidneys, making him one of the youngest multi-organ donors in the country.

“It was a tough decision but we took it as we wanted to make his short life meaningful. We could now see him live through the eyes of two otherwise visually-challenged youngsters and a middle-aged woman, who had suffered kidney failure,” said Ishaan’s mother, Swathi.

Ishaan was born on April 14, 2006, as a normal bubbly baby to Swathi and Venugopalan Vedam, both software engineers employed with IBM and Infosys respectively. “There was no health complaint till Dasara last year. Suddenly he started vomiting and we thought it was a simple case of indigestion or electrolyte deficiency.”

Tragically for the young couple it was not so, as Ishaan suffered bouts of unconsciousness.

For a week from October 21, 2007 the couple made several agonizing rounds to hospitals and a series of complex scans and tests later revealed that he suffered from a rare type of brain tumour.

Without losing time, the couple consented for a complicated and extremely risky surgery for the removal of the ‘large carcinogenic tumour’. Their prayers were answered when the October 26 surgery was successful.

“He came out from near comatose condition, recognized us and cried,” recalled Swathi.

Just when they thought the worst was over, his condition deteriorated and he again slipped into a coma on November 1.

“He was put on ventilator and doctors told us that his chances of survival were bleak. It was then that we took the difficult decision to donate his organs,” she said.

What inspired the couple was the brave decision taken by an Army major to donate organs of his son of the same ago as Ishaan who succumbed to grievous injuries in a fall. “My son came into this world and left in a brief time but gave a new lease of life to three others”, she added.

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