14-year-old girl’s hopes for lung transplant to keep singing

By Quanecia Fraser

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    OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — Life has changed for the family of a 14-year-old girl from Soldier, Iowa, in just a matter of weeks. They’re now hoping Katie Hoskins gets a much-needed lung transplant, so she can enjoy the life she has left to the fullest.

The sound of Katie’s voice is music to her parents’ ears.

“She is full of joy, all the time,” her mom Vera said.

But about six months ago, Katie’s parents started noticing changes in their daughter. She would get tired easily and started having panic attacks.

“We could tell something was wrong. We weren’t sure what,” Vera said.

Then two weeks ago, Katie’s symptoms took a turn for the worst.

“She came in the kitchen, she walked to the pantry and she had to rest. And then she walked to the counter, and then she had to rest,” Vera remembered.

Moments later, Vera said Katie looked like she was about to pass out.

“(I) grabbed her shoulders and I said ‘look at me,’ and when she picked her head up and looked at me, her face was completely white, her lips were completely white and her pupils instantly flashed, dilated,” Vera said. “I started dialing 911 as I’m telling her ‘keep breathing through your nose and out through your mouth.’ She’s trying, she’s trying but I can tell something was just not right. She’s looking worse.”

The teen went to a local hospital before being transferred to Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha.

“What we believe for Katie to have is PVOD, is what’s caused her pulmonary hypertension is extremely rare. And so this is the rarest of the rare (kinds) of pulmonary hypertension,” Nurse Practitioner Venus Anderson said.

PVOD stands for Pulmonary Veno-Occlusive Disease.

“When the lungs are ill and sick with high resistance, the heart can only overcome that for so long,” Anderson said.

Anderson said Katie’s heart failed the night she went to the hospital.

“I’m alive right now. So that’s good,” Katie said about how she feels at this point in her life.

Katie will have to get a lung transplant. Her parents were told the life expectancy after a lung transplant is six to seven years, but getting it would improve her quality of life.

“We want to give her as much as we possibly can, as many experiences as we possibly can while she’s here,” Katie’s dad Adam said.

Because there’s nowhere to get a pediatric lung transplant nearby, Katie flew to Texas for an evaluation. If she does get approved, Anderson said it will be months before Katie actually does get the transplant.

“There will be multiple medications for her to take, frequent follow-up appointments, things like that to make sure that she can stay infection free, specifically in the first year after transplant,” Anderson said.

For the past few weeks, Katie’s voice has filled her hospital room.

“She’s been singing to us, and playing her ukulele when she feels good,” Anderson said.

Her parents are hopeful she can get the transplant, so they continue hearing the sweet sounds of Katie for as long as possible.

“I want to do things that I want to do because I don’t want to look back on my life and regret things that I didn’t do,” Katie said.

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