Riding a roller coaster. Maybe some skiing.
Those options, previously off-limits because of her health, excite Kathryn Slattery, whose new liver and new heart make such activities possible.
But first things first. "I'm excited to sleep in my own bed," she said.
Kathryn, 18, of Lincoln has been away from home since Dec. 5, when she was hospitalized at Children's Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha to be treated with intravenous antibiotics. She later was transferred to the Nebraska Medical Center where, on Jan. 10, she became the first person to undergo a heart-liver transplant there.
She was born with a rare congenital heart defect, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, in which the left side of the heart is seriously underdeveloped.
At the time of her birth, her parents, Jim and Marilyn Slattery, had three options: do nothing; take their 4½-pound baby to California for a heart transplant; or put Kathryn, the youngest of their five children, through three heart surgeries.
Kathryn had surgery at 1 week, 6 months and 20 months, all at the University of Michigan Medical Center.
The surgeries, her father said, allowed her to live a relatively normal life. She played recreational basketball, volleyball and soccer. She danced.
But the family knew she eventually would need a heart transplant.
In 2008, Kathryn began having problems with her pancreas, which led to the removal of her gallbladder in June 2011.
Afterward, fluids began building up in her abdomen.
On Dec. 1, Kathryn felt ill and called her mom to pick her up from Lincoln Pius X High School, where she is a senior.
Doctors removed fluid the next day. Three days later, she was at Children's.
Kathryn's name went on the transplant list Jan. 5.
Five days later, the family learned she would have surgery that day. She went in at 4:30 p.m. and headed to intensive care 14 hours later.
Surgeons at the medical center have performed 250-plus heart transplants and more than 2,600 liver transplants since 1988, but they hadn't done the two at the same time.
"We were very confident in our ability to do each of the components separately," said Dr. David Mercer, one of Kathryn's liver transplant surgeons. A heart-liver transplant, he said, was "well within what we could handle."
Only 13 heart-liver transplants were performed in the United States last year through the end of October. Fifteen were performed nationwide in 2010.
Mercer said that since 1992, just six or seven heart-liver transplants have been performed on patients younger than 18.
Yet Kathryn's surgery went well, Mercer said.
"It was fantastic. The heart surgeons just did a beautiful job."
The heart surgeons — Drs. John Um and James Hammel — operated for about five hours, Mercer said. They made sure everything was working properly, then the liver surgeons — Mercer and Drs. Jean Botha and Wendy Grant — spent four hours on the liver.
"You have a brand-new heart that has to sort of hit the ground running and do its job," he said. "If you take that situation, which is already pretty challenging, and then add in a liver transplant ... it puts a lot of strain on anybody's heart."
Now Kathryn has a vertical incision down the middle of her chest and a horizontal one across her abdomen.
The first thing she asked for after surgery? A water swab, then a soft taco from Amigo's.
"She's always hungry," her mother said.
Kathryn stayed in the intensive care unit for 14 days, moved to a regular hospital floor for eight days and then to a hotel room in the Lied Transplant Center building at the Nebraska Medical Center.
On Jan. 28, she celebrated her 18th birthday at the hospital with friends and family.
Throughout her ordeal, Kathryn has received support from classmates at Pius X. Principal Tom Korta said the school held a special Mass to pray for her and her successful surgery. School officials passed the bucket for donations at a home basketball game, put up a poster at the winter formal and invited students to sign it, and collected birthday notes for her.
Students also pray for her at the start of classes, and many have visited her at the hospital.
"She's very much on the minds and hearts of our kids," Korta said.
Kathryn also had frequent visits, both before and after her surgery, from a 17-year-old heart transplant recipient who told her what to expect throughout the process.
"It was just really cool to see it from a patient's point of view, especially a patient that's my age," she said.
Today, Kathryn feels much better than she did before the surgery.
"My breathing's better. I feel stronger. I couldn't tell that before, 'cause I didn't know any other way. I guess I was feeling pretty crappy before."
Marilyn Slattery said her daughter "was getting to the point where she did not have quality of life."
She lived with a fever and would fluctuate between chills and being extremely hot, Marilyn Slattery said.
Kathryn headed home Friday. She plans to be back at school in March. After graduating in May, she aims to enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and study speech pathology.
Kathryn will have to wear a surgical mask at school sometimes to protect her from germs. She won't be able to eat fresh fruits and vegetables until March because of potential exposure to tropical pathogens, and can never eat grapefruit again, because it interacts with her immunosuppression drugs.
"But I don't like grapefruit," she said, so that's not a sacrifice.
The Slatterys consider themselves blessed — grateful for the donor's gift of life and for the skilled work of the surgeons and others.
"It was always our choice where to have the surgery done," Marilyn Slattery said. "There were options, but through meeting the surgeons and the doctors and the teams, the confidence that I felt from them ... that made the decision easy."
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