A Louisiana woman describes how doctors told her she had less than a day to live after experiencing abdominal pain.
Danielle Perea, then 24, was told the prognosis more than five years ago and described this week how she is still alive in an interview with CBS News.
She said she had developed a blood clot in one of the blood vessels that carries blood from the small intestine. She was vomiting blood and was taken to the emergency room as her symptoms worsened.
“They just saw that everything was completely black, necrotic and dead,” Perea told the station. “They told my friend, ‘There’s no way she’s going to survive this, you have to call her parents.’
She said she was both told she “probably only had 24 hours to live” and went on to share how she had exceeded expectations, living on intravenous nutrition for a year and a half before receiving a successful transplant.
Danielle Perea was told she was hours away from death about five years ago after showing up at a hospital with stomach pains. The source was her small intestines, plagued with dead tissue. A transplant was necessary and she could live until she could obtain one
On Saturday, the medical technologist said in an interview with CBS News that she is still alive
“They were like, ‘You have to go to the clinic right away.’ It wasn’t an option,” Perea recalled of getting the call she’d been waiting for in June 2020.
The subsequent surgery lasted 10 hours and during this surgery doctors worked tirelessly to address her mesenteric ischemia.
Years earlier, surgeons had tried in vain to save her small intestine, but there were too many dead cells – also called necrotic tissue – in other words,
“They just saw that everything was completely black, necrotic and dead,” Perea said just over 200 days after tying the knot with Luis Perea.
“They (told Luis) ‘There’s no way she’s going to survive this, you have to call her parents. Get everyone here that needs to be here because she probably only has 24 hours to live,'” she recalled.
Doctors would then transfer her to hospice care, with the days ticking by until her seemingly inevitable death.
But there she exceeded the doctors’ expectations: she maintained ‘strong vital functions’ for more than a week.
At that point, she, Luis, and her mother went looking for a lifesaver, and they found it in the Cleveland Clinic’s intestinal transplant program.
She recalled developing a blood clot in one of the blood vessels that carries blood from the small intestine, causing her to vomit blood and end up in the emergency room as her symptoms worsened.
Doctors would then transfer her to a hospice, where the days ticked down until her seemingly inevitable death. But there she exceeded doctors’ expectations, maintaining ‘strong vital signs’ for more than a week
The head of the program, Dr. Kareem Abu-Elmagd, later agreed to take on the task of replacing Perea’s small intestine. With that, the next phase of the then-doctoral student’s grueling road to recovery began: waiting for a suitable match.
At that point she was transferred to the hospital in Ohio, where her small intestine was almost completely cut away.
However, her condition quickly stabilized and after several subsequent procedures, she was ready to be added to the program’s transplant list in the spring of 2019.
For the next year she lived on nutrients given through an IV. Without intestines she could not eat normally.
During this period she had to undergo another operation. This time, the damage to her trachea caused by a breathing tube was repaired before she could undergo the transplant.
This would increase the time she had to wait, with the pandemic further complicating the process by forcing her to donate an organ that would have been considered a match in April 2020, she said.
Two months later she received a call that an organ had become available again, after which she underwent the 10-hour operation.
Although such transplants are extremely difficult and rare, the surgery was a success, she told CBS, adding that she had to stay in a hospital room on and off for several months afterward because she frequently suffered from fevers.
At this point, she, Luis, and her mother searched for a savior of sorts, and found one in the Cleveland Clinic’s intestinal transplant program. They agreed to take on the task of replacing Perea’s small intestine, paving the way for the next phase of the then-doctoral student’s grueling road to recovery—waiting for a suitable match.
The following year she lived on nutrients pumped intravenously, because without intestines she could not eat normally. Two months later she received a call that another organ had become available, after which she underwent the 10-hour operation
She then underwent another procedure in January 2021, this one to repair her abdominal wall and undo an incision made during the surgery.
She was then given a full bill of health, before spending the next four years of her life with her lover.
They got married last November in Lafayette, Perea’s birthplace.
During that time, she was also able to complete her degree as a clinical laboratory science student at the University of West Florida, before taking a position as a medical technologist at Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola.
She told CBS that despite now living a relatively normal life, she has to take “about 40 pills a day” to manage her condition.
She also revealed that she may still need a kidney transplant in the future due to the amount of anti-rejection drugs she has been forced to take that inherently damage the organ.
Still, she said everything has been “super normal” so far and she’s looking forward to a long, healthy life.
‘I have no limitations. My incisions have healed well,” Perea said, recounting how she got married in November. “We bought a house,” she further revealed. ‘It’s all going well.’
She completed her clinical laboratory sciences degree at the University of West Florida and then went on to work as a medical technologist at Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola.
She married the boyfriend who stuck with her through it all in November, after receiving a full bill of health following the successful transplant
As for the parting words from the Cleveland Clinic doctors, she said, “They said something like, ‘Just keep living your life. There is nothing holding you back.”
They were responsible for 18 of the 95 intestinal transplants in the US last year, with the operation having a low success rate because they were “difficult” organs to monitor, and the highest rejection rate of all types of organ transplants.
However, Pera overcame all odds and offered hope to anyone facing a similar endeavor.