8-month-old gets liver transplant from godmother

Surgeon at work.

Credit: kerale

Credit: kerale

Surgeon at work.

He's known as "Finn the Mighty Warrior" on a Facebook page devoted to him, and this 8-month old fighter continues to battle against two rare liver conditions.

But Finn O'Sullivan won't have to fight alone. The infant, in need of a transplant, found a match — not from a relative, but from his godmother, ABC News reported.

Sarah McKitterick, the child’s liver donor, said he is "the strongest person she'd ever met."

His body's strength, in fact, has been returning since he received 15 percent of McKitterick's liver on April 18, ABC News reported.

"The first time I saw him [after the transplant], I saw the whites of his eyes, something I had never seen before. He has been so ill, so yellow," McKitterick said.

Donating part of her liver to Finn was "an honor and a privilege," McKitterick told ABC News.

"I knew I was the one," she told ABC News. That’s what she told lifelong friend, Kate Mullen, who is Finn's mother.

"She was steadfast from the beginning that it was her," said Mullen, who lives with her family in New York. "I'm so humbled by what she did."

The infant has both biliary atresia and Alpha-1 liver conditions. The first is a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts that occurs in infants, while the second is a genetic defect that can cause liver disease, ABC News reported.

Dr. Adam Griesemer, one of Finn’s transplant surgeons and the assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told ABC News that Finn's dual conditions are "pretty unusual" and that this is the first time he saw a child with this combination of issues.

Finding Finn a match for a liver transplant was "exceedingly crucial," Griesemer told ABC News. "He would not have lived for long.”