Exclusive | Hero 10-year-old heart transplant patient pays it forward — to save the lives of two toddlers

It started with the gift of a single heart — and ended with three lives transformed.

Last July, doctors at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed an extremely rare series of surgeries that changed the lives of three children forever. 

A heart from a deceased donor was transplanted into 10-year-old Hend Almesafri, who paid it forward by then providing her pulmonary valve to John Catoliato, 2, and her aortic valve to Teddy Carter, 3. 

Now thriving, all three kids reunited at the hospital last February, where Hend surprised her “heart brothers” with gifts and a moment their families will never forget.

“You see these kids interacting and you know people are good,” John’s mother, Joanne Dowling, told the Post. 

“We can never come up with a gift for her — what could you buy someone who gave your child the gift of life?” 

John’s scary heart condition

Joanne was only 24 weeks pregnant when she found out her unborn child had truncus arteriosus, a condition in which instead of having two exits from the heart — one going to the body and one going to the lungs — he only had one and a hole in his heart. 

She and her husband, Thomas Catoliato, were immediately referred to New York-Presbyterian. 

“This is our first child together, and it just took a drastic turn — I felt like everything was obliterated from that point forward,” Joanne said. 

“I don’t even know how to describe it, other than your pregnancy is no longer your pregnancy. You’re just scared from that point forward, but the team made it so it was very seamless.”

She never considered terminating. 

“I loved [John] from the minute I found out I was pregnant with him,” she said. “I knew that the doctors at New York-Presbyterian could fix him. If anyone could fix him, it would be them.” 

He had open heart surgery when he was only 5 days old and, while it went well, it was difficult to accept that he would need to continue having surgeries his entire life because the artificial valve just wouldn’t grow. 

So when they found out about the possibility of a heart transplant, they were hopeful. 

“It’s almost like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for him,” Joanne said. “It’s a comfort to us to know that John may never need an open heart surgery — we may never have to hand our child to a surgeon again.”

In July, she was grabbing a cup of coffee in the afternoon when she got the call — they had a match. Ten-year-old Hend would be getting her own brand-new heart, but was donating the perfectly usable pulmonary valve from her old one.

Things moved quickly after that. Thomas raced home from a trip to the beach and was on the phone with Dr. Gladstone discussing the procedure that evening. 

It was a degree of professionalism, kindness, consistency and communication that had kept their spirits up since they first found out about John’s condition.

“They were like, ‘This is what we do for a living, right?’ This is what we go to work every day to do. So they kind of held us up. They pumped wind back into our sails. And they kept that level of connection,” he said. 

At 5 a.m. the following morning, they came to the hospital feeling scared and confused, but they knew that they — and John — were in good hands. 

“It was so sunny that day, and John was in his pajamas, and I just looked at him and thought ‘Buddy, you don’t even know.’ He had no clue,” she recalled, tearfully. “And [the hospital staff] was just so kind.”

Even though John was only 18 months old at the time, Joanne said the doctors “didn’t make it traumatizing at all to take him” away, because they “made it fun for” John, as though he was just about to go on a little ride. 

“New York-Presbyterian was so prepared on every level, from the general intake to the ER all the way up to getting him into the OR,” Thomas said. “It was almost as if everybody had a team meeting of 50 people for five hours, to which every step, every door that opened, every transition was seamless.”

Following the transplant, they stayed in touch with John and Katie Carter — the parents of the other recipient, Teddy.

“We call them heart brothers,” Joanne said. “John has one side and Teddy has the other.”

Teddy’s surgery-saving transplant

Teddy was two months old when he was diagnosed with a heart defect called aortic stenosis, which can block or restrict blood flow to the heart. 

“We were totally surprised,” Katie told The Post. 

“It was really scary to have a child who needs pretty immediate open heart surgery — that is certainly something no parent wants to go through, but we just had faith that we had amazing doctors at New York-Presbyterian and we were lucky to live in New York and have access to such incredible care.”

Despite multiple procedures, he would have needed several more open-heart surgeries before he reached adulthood — were it not for this heart transplant.

Two toddlers, one heart donation

This type of surgery — in which one donor’s heart is used to benefit multiple recipients — is called a split-root domino heart transplant and it’s pretty uncommon.  

“A split-root domino partial heart transplant is extremely rare and has been performed only a handful of times — and, up until this operation, never in the northeast,” Dr. Andrew Goldstone, surgical director of pediatric heart transplantation at New York-Presbyterian, told the Post. 

“We’re uniquely positioned to perform domino transplants and split-root dominos because of the surgical and team expertise in all aspects of cardiovascular disease and transplantation, and the resources necessary to make this all a reality.”

All three of the recipients are doing well, and they reunited at the hospital in February — an experience Joanne described as both “surreal” and “humbling.” 

“You see this little girl and she’s got gift bags — she bought them presents,” Joanne said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t get her anything.’ But what can you give somebody that gave your child an option to live?” 

“It was just really special to be able to spend some time together,” Katie said. 

And if you think the kids are too young to really understand what was happening, according to Teddy’s father, they seem to comprehend more than you’d expect.

“We were in the car driving to [Teddy’s] appointment the other day, and he said ‘My heart was broken and now it’s fixed,’” he said.