9/11 Five Years Later: A tragedy in Tulsa

STEPHEN PINGRY / Tulsa World

Lois Breedlove and her grandson, Joseph, look over pictures of her granddaughter, ChyAnna (pictured in a courtesy photo below), whose organs were donated when she died five years ago.

9/11 nearly foiled gift of life

By NICOLE NASCENZI World Staff Writer
9/10/2006

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As planes hit the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, the Breedlove family barely registered the national catastrophe because their eyes were fixed on their own tragedy in Tulsa.

Their energetic toddler, ChyAnna, known for her contagious smile and irrepressible energy, lay dying in a bed in one of St. Francis Hospital's towers.

"When you are so focused on a sick child, it doesn't matter what is going on in the rest of the world," said Lois Breedlove, ChyAnna's grandmother.

Although her family did not know it, ChyAnna suffered from a rare brain defect present since birth called a cerebral arteriovenous malformation. Often as in ChyAnna's case, there are no symptoms until the defect ruptures and causes bleeding in the brain.

One moment ChyAnna, who was a month shy of her third birthday, was bouncing on a bed and the next she complained of a headache, vomited and lost consciousness. Doctors attempted surgery to remove the affected brain tissue, but it did not save the girl.

Hours after the World Trade Center collapsed, doctors told the Breedlove family that their little girl no longer had any brain activity and then the family's world collapsed.

The girl, so full of energy that her grandmother said "you would have to all but sit on her to get her to sleep," lay motionless.

Looking back on ChyAnna's energetic personality and her desire to constantly meet new people, Breedlove said she believes her granddaughter knew her time on earth would be short and was trying to pack in a lifetime of experience in a few short years.

A church friend told Lois Breedlove that two parents who died in the twin towers attack needed a little girl to parent in heaven and God gave them ChyAnna.

On the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, representatives from LifeShare Organ Donations Services of Oklahoma approached the family and asked ChyAnna's father, Joseph Breedlove, if he would donate his daughter's organs.

The family chose to donate her organs so that ChyAnna's death could save another family from enduring the agony that they were experiencing.

The terrorist attacks, however, almost halted the Breedlove family's donation. Because commercial flights had been grounded, ChyAnna's little heart couldn't reach a child in Indiana, who needed a transplant and was a match, said Dr. Richard Ranne, a pediatric surgeon at St. Francis.

Ranne said time is critical for organ donations, especially for whole-heart transplants, which need to take place within four hours of removal.

LifeShare found a recipient for ChyAnna's kidneys in Nebraska and drove the organs eight hours to be transplanted, LifeShare's Phil Van Stavern said.

Ranne said he sat with ChyAnna's little heart on ice for hours, making phone call after phone call, trying to find a plane that could transport the heart from Tulsa.

Although several hours had passed, the heart's valves could still be used for life-saving procedures, but for that to happen the heart would need to be in Atlanta within 24 hours. There, a laboratory would test the heart, remove blood vessels and freeze the valves at minus-190 degrees, Ranne said.

"I sat there watching every tick of the clock, because unless you can meet those deadlines, the donation is wasted, and it was already a sad case because a child had died," Ranne said.

Eventually on the next morning, he called then-Gov. Frank Keating's office and spoke with the governor's executive assistant, Nancy Runge, who put a plan in motion that resulted in an Oklahoma state trooper picking up the cooler containing ChyAnna's heart and driving it to Jones Riverside Airport. There, a pilot used the governor's state plane to fly the heart to Atlanta after special clearance was given by the Federal Aviation Administration. The heart arrived with just moments to spare, Ranne said.

The surgeon said the series of events was a great example of how Oklahomans can pull together during a crisis.

"We are still all pretty proud of that," he said.

Normally, the Atlanta lab receives 16 hearts each day, but on Sept. 12, 2001, the only one the facility received was the little heart from Tulsa, Ranne said.

ChyAnna's heart valves were used in two pediatric patients, and the Nebraska man who received her kidneys is doing well. Identities of the patients were not available.

Lois Breedlove said she would one day like to hear from the recipients of ChyAnna's organs.

She said she cannot believe five years have passed since the nation and her family suffered such tragedies on Sept. 11. Breedlove now has several more grandchildren, including a 2-year-old boy named Joseph, who would have been ChyAnna's half-brother.

Despite all of the joys in her life, Breedlove said, each time she hears a news report about the terrorist attacks, she remembers ChyAnna's death.

Her father, Joseph, each year takes the day off from work to mark the anniversary of his daughter's death.

"You really never recover from the death of a child," she said.