Ninety minutes into the procedure, Avery broke into "this blood-curdling cry that I can still hear," Eric says.
Avery's lungs began to fill with fluid, and she was in danger."It's one of those moments for me as a mother. ... I was holding her and she's crying and you could tell that she was distressed, and it felt like there were people moving in slow motion around me," Erin recounts. "I remember yelling, 'Do something! You need to do something!' "
Avery's body couldn't absorb the marrow, which has the consistency of blood, fast enough. Liquid was suffocating her lungs.
"Everything's crashing around us and the attending doctor is looking at his feet and saying, 'I can't do anything else,' " Eric recalls, his eyes fixed on the carpet. "I can remember making phone calls to my family saying I think this is going to be it."
"The doctors were able to stabilize her quickly before she stopped breathing," Eric posted on the family's online diary that evening. "Currently she is on a breathing tube to help her breathe and is sedated. ... Your prayers are needed more than ever now."
That night, doctors decided to continue with Avery's transplant, despite her weakened lungs.
"Avery is a fighter. She wouldn't have gotten this far if she wasn't," the diary reads.
A turning point
Two years later, Jana sat in her apartment watching a video. In the footage, Avery was outside; she was running toward the camera, laughing wildly with her hands outstretched.
Jana's heart sank, she says.
Up to this point, she and the Schlesingers had been corresponding anonymously, unable to share their identities because of Germany's donor regulations.
Once the two-year period had elapsed, their communication progressed with e-mail, then phone calls.
"It was familiar from the beginning; we have the same sense of humor," says Jana, who paced in her room awaiting their first phone call. "I heard [Erin's] voice, and we had to laugh a lot and just talk."
She wanted to know more after that call, but was nervous about visiting the family.
Jana describes the video as a turning point.
"I had to cry," Jana remembers, feeling pulled toward Avery during the video. "I saw that this is a happy, funny little girl, and I was so happy and all of the emotion came out and I had to cry. It was a wonderful moment for me."
In a few months, she would travel to the United States and meet the Schlesingers and little Avery.
