Mother in need of double-lung transplant makes desperate appeal

Thirty-five year old Marcela Alejandra Arroyo has been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Favaloro Foundation for a week now, urgently in need of a double-lung transplant. Last Friday, her condition was flagged as a “National Emergency”.

The mother of a 9-year old girl, Marcela is trying to get the media to cover her desperate situation, while at the same time she hopes people will become aware of the importance of organ donation.

“It’s hard for us to see ourselves as potential donors, but we could also be organ recipients, which is worse,” said Marta, sister in law.

It took Marcela’s doctors four years to reach her diagnosis, until in 2010, they announced she suffered from Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (“a disease that advances in a terrible way,” Marta says). Before that, she fell ill several times, suffering from serious cases of pneumonia, which caused her health to deteriorate.

The family praised the special treatment that Marcela received by the Favaloro Foundation as well as by the company where she works.

Marcela has been on the Incucai national transplant organization's waiting list for the last four months. Her relatives wished to make an appeal to those now going through the difficult situation of losing a loved one, assuring them that “they will be helping someone else to keep on living.”