Donor Elaine Kirksey-Jones holds 9-month-old Jayleeonnah Valentine
Bou-Silverio, as her mother Susan Bou looks on. (Holly Butcher)

Nine-month-old Jayleeonnah Valentine Bou-Silverio and her parents finally met the woman who saved her life.

On Tuesday, the two parties were reunited at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) four months after Jayleeonnah received a liver transplant from Elaine Kirksey-Jones. As Kriksey-Jones took the baby into her arms, tears streaked down her face.

"I'm just so glad I can help her," she said. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long time."  

When she was 2-months-old, Jayleeonnah got sick.

"She was very yellow and swollen," her mother, Susan Bou, said. "Her doctor said there was nothing wrong; she has jaundice and it will go away. His suggestion was to put her in the sun."

But Jayleeonnah did not get better.

Her parents took her to the emergency room at Long Beach Memorial Hospital where they gave her several blood tests, which eventually led to an open liver biopsy.

Doctors diagnosed the 3-and-a-half-month-old with biliary atresia, a rare liver disease that only affects infants.

When babies suffer from this condition, bile gets blocked inside the liver, instead of flowing directly into the gallbladder. This is dangerous because the trapped bile can rapidly cause damage, cirrhosis and eventually liver failure. Symptoms usually appear within two to eight weeks after birth.

"Jayleeonnah was really skinny and really, really, really yellow," Bou said. "She wasn't gaining any weight."

After learning about her condition, she was transferred to CHLA for treatment. Although there is no cure for the disease, there are a few remedies. One is the Kasai procedure, which replaces the blocked passages outside the liver with a portion of the patient's intestine.  

"They wanted to try Kasai, but the doctors said it was too late," Bou said.

The other solution was to sign up for a liver transplant and wait in line for a potential donor.

"There is a shortage of organs in general for all the recipients who are waiting for them," CHLA Surgical Director Dr. Yuri Genyk said.

Currently, more than 17,000 patients are registered on the liver transplant waiting list at the United Network for Organ Sharing, but only 4,500 cadaver donor livers are available. Because of this shortage, doctors have started relying on living donors.  

"About 50 percent of all our transplants are from living donors," Genyk said. The CHLA performs about 25 liver transplants per year.

After learning that Jayleeonnah needed a transplant, her parents got tested to see if they could donate.

"We wanted to do it," Bou said. "But her father was too big and I wasn't 18 yet."

Approximately 20 percent is taken from the donor's liver and given to the recipient.  

"We want to make sure that that 20 percent taken will be size-appropriate for a small baby because sometimes it can be too big," Genyk said.

So the parents waited a month until Bou turned 18 to see if she was a match.

"I did all my tests and I found out I was pregnant," she said as her dark brown eyes filled with tears. "So I couldn't do it."

But then something happened in November.

"I was playing with Jayleeonnah in the hospital room and two nurses came in to tell us that there's someone who wants to donate a liver to my daughter," Bou said. "I just started to cry."

Within two months of signing up for a transplant, CHLA had found a compatible anonymous donor.

Jayleeonnah received a new liver from Kirskey-Jones on Dec. 9 after a 10-hour procedure led by Genyk. She went home just in time for her first birthday on Feb. 14.

"The liver is perfect," Bou said. "She's now eating a ton."

After hearing this, Kirksey-Jones, a mother of two from Fontana, Calif., smiled.

"That's because of the new liver," she said. "My 19-month-old son, that's all he does is eat. He's part of me, and now she's part of me, so that's probably why she eats so much."

This was the second time Kirksey-Jones donated an organ. Nine years ago she donated her right kidney.

"You do one thing, you want to do it over and over again," she said. "Then I saw you could donate your liver and it grows back, so I thought, 'why not?'"

In September, she called CHLA to ask if they were accepting organs from anonymous donors. The hospital said yes, and she filled out some paperwork to match her with a compatible recipient. By November, the hospital found a perfect match with Jayleeonnah.

For Kirskey-Jones, the operation went smoothly, and she was out of the hospital one week later. Doctors say she will have no lasting effects as the liver regenerates in about two months.

"I feel great," she said.