NEENAH, WI - For Mindi Piasecki, plans for a Mother's Day brunch are extra special. She hasn't been out to eat with her family since October 2014.
Not that she regrets a day since then. After being told her adopted daughter Tess wouldn't live through the year, Mindi's thankful for every day that she spent in isolation with Tess, carefully protecting her from anything that could kill her while Tess had almost no immune system.
After receiving a life-saving thymus tissue transplant, 2-year-old Tess is finally well enough to meet other people and her parents are happy to show her off. Dressed in matching tie-dye shirts for their photo opp, Mindi and her husband Mark said they owe their happiness this Mother's Day to the generosity of their community.
This summer, the Piaseckis are planning to adopt a baby boy who will be born to a Michigan family. The birth mother's aunt went to school with Mark and saw previous stories of Tess and the Piaseckis.
"She said she thought we deserved another baby," Mindi said of Mark's classmate.
Just two years ago, Mark and Mindi didn't know if they would ever have even one child. They endured four failed adoptions and three miscarriages, with the last one revealing that Mindi had cancer and needed to have her uterus removed.
Becoming parents
Despite the $18,000 they had to spend just to adopt Tess, and the months of medical nightmares, Mindi and Mark said it's all been worth it and they're ready to bring home another baby. Now back home in Neenah, Tess babbles away, pushing her head playfully into Mindi's cradling arm.
"We were told she was going to die," Mindi said, rubbing Tess' back. "She's strong, with the attitude to match."
Tess was born with genetic disorders that meant on top of heart and hearing problems, she didn't have an immune system. Mindi and Tess moved to North Carolina to get a thymus transplant for Tess last May in a rare procedure that's not always effective. Less than 100 people have had the procedure, and about 70 percent have survived.
In the first months after the transplant, it remained unclear whether it would work for Tess as the doctors waited and watched to see if she would start producing her own germ-killing T-cells as planned. This spring, they finally got the answer they've been waiting for: the transplant was a success and Tess' immune system is fully functioning.
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