Parish unites to help family pay for 10-year-old's heart transplant

Published: 2007-03-23

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- While Xavia Pirozzi's new heart is priceless, her medical bills have topped $3.5 million, with her family's portion after insurance coverage estimated at $600,000. The drugs she will take for the rest of her life cost $1,500 a month. "I worry about her health first," said her father, Ralph Pirozzi. "That is my main concern. On a financial basis, I'll deal with that later." That's where the Heart of St. Joseph's comes in. The committee of parents from St. Joseph Parish and School in the Baltimore suburb of Fullerton is raising funds to pay the fifth-grader's medical costs, assisted by other schools and parishes. And that's not the only help the family has gotten. "The outpouring of prayer support from family, friends and patients was tremendous," Pirozzi told The Catholic Review, newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese. Xavia, 10, underwent a heart transplant Jan. 6 at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she had spent 10 months after being diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a rare degenerative disease that causes the heart to stiffen over time.

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