# @childrenscolo on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DWmUbNlDrL3
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68564178-childrenscolo-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/31188f1b09.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-04-01T18:15:13.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Children's Hospital Colorado (@ChildrensColo) — https://gondola.cc/ChildrensColo

## Caption

“I’m not in pain. I get to paint and eat snacks all day.” 

Discharge day is an incredible moment for all patients who receive a transplant. For Gracie, it was also a unique milestone: She was the first patient at Children’s Colorado to receive a dual organ heart-liver transplant. 

As a baby, Gracie was diagnosed with single-ventricle disease. By age 5, she’d had several surgeries that improved her condition but didn’t cure it. Over time, it began impacting Gracie’s everyday life more and more. 

“It got to the point where her quality of life was severely diminished,” says Gracie’s mom Whitney. A heart transplant would be Gracie’s only chance at recovery. 

As the family began preparing for her heart transplant, Gracie’s doctors grew concerned about her liver. Her condition and previous surgeries had impacted her liver so significantly that it would need to be replaced as well — and soon. 

Thankfully, Gracie’s care team had planned for this possibility. Two years earlier, our cardiology and hepatology teams began considering and preparing for a dual heart-liver transplant — something they had never done before. In fact, only about 35 pediatric dual heart-liver surgeries had been performed across the entire country. That careful preparation saved Gracie’s life.

Thanks to a generous organ donor, Gracie’s team received a heart and liver that were a match within just a handful of weeks. On surgery day, the team began with the heart procedure before completing the liver transplant. In whole, the operation took about 17 hours. From there, Gracie recovered in the intensive care unit, where a team of specialists and nurses monitored both organs seamlessly.

Within just a couple days, Gracie was able to stand for a few seconds, and it wasn’t long before she took her first walk around the hospital, with medical dogs Kit and Galaxy by her side. She was home in time to start sixth grade alongside her classmates.

Today, not even a year after her transplant, she’s back to running, rollerblading, studying new languages and catching up with her friends.

#HereItsDifferent #DonateLife #DonateLifeMonth #PediatricOrganTransplant #OrganDonation

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## Tags

donatelifemonth, donatelife, organdonation, hereitsdifferent, pediatricorgantransplant

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