In 1987, 2-year-old Rita Erickson was propelled into the spotlight because her liver was failing. She needed a transplant, doctors said, and her Columbia Heights family needed help paying for the surgery.
The media coverage that followed — the Star Tribune wrote about her five times in two weeks — documented several successful community fundraisers and her liver transplant, rare for a toddler. The operation nearly failed, but at the last minute, her new liver began functioning. Rita lived — and faded out of the public eye.
"It's very interesting for me to sit down and read about it [in articles] because I really don't remember it," she said.
Today, Rita, 30, has a job in the financial industry, a home in Elk River and a boyfriend she's planning to marry. And she's doing two things doctors said she never would: She's given birth to a baby girl and will likely stop taking her last anti-rejection drug, prescribed so her body wouldn't attack her liver.
"She was told she'd be on [the drugs] for the rest of her life," said her mother, Sandra Erickson. "All the effects from going through that whole transplant are going to be over, finally."
An early diagnosis
As a newborn, Rita's limbs were limp, and "she didn't seem to eat very well," her mom said. The doctor diagnosed her with biliary atresia, a rare condition resulting in liver ducts that don't work, or an absence of ducts altogether. It's not clear what causes it, Rita Erickson said.
Physicians said it was "the worst case of biliary atresia they had ever seen," Sandra Erickson said.
The little girl was given a month to live, but then her liver started working — barely — and her prognosis improved.
