13-year-old girl who died saves her father's life through kidney transplant
Dhima Martin now asks why. Why did this happen to her daughter?
"I was praying for a miracle in the hospital. Her life was a miracle. I love her. And I miss her every day, every moment," Martin told sister station WPBF 25 News.
Her 13-year-old daughter, Symaria Glenn, was healthy. She was vibrant. But on January 31, her life changed.
"She complained of a headache. Unbeknownst to me, how severe it was, her brain was bleeding. So, she was taken to a local hospital and then airlifted to Joe DiMaggio's Children's Hospital," Martin said.
Her daughter was in the hospital for about a week before she died.
"I still believed in God to do the impossible, save her," she said.
Her family had made the decision to donate her organs and ended up saving five people's lives.
One of them was actually the life of the teen's father. He had never told his children he was on dialysis. But he was in dire need of a kidney transplant.
And it turned out that Glenn's kidney was a match to her father's.
"She would have wanted that. She would have wanted to save her father," Martin said.
The tragedy also occurred just a couple of days before Martin was about to get married.
"Went from a time to celebrate love, to watching my daughter lay there unresponsive and unconscious and then losing her," she said.
And now, she wears beautiful, handmade bracelets that her daughter made for her as a wedding gift.
"She wanted to be an actress, so would memorize monologues, singing songs, she was a big Taylor Swift fan," Martin said.
April is Donate Life Month, and officials say, "Every 8 minutes, another person is added to the national transplant waiting list, emphasizing the urgency of the situation."
Martin and her loved ones wanted to share the heroic actions and the beautiful life of their daughter.