Phoebe Root

Phoebe grew up in Hope, which is near Camden. When she was eight weeks old, her parents learned there was something wrong with her liver. “I consider myself lucky,” she says, “because I remember literally none of it.” According to what her parents have relayed to her, she spent about six months at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she was eventually diagnosed with biliary atresia. She needed a full liver transplant. “I know it’s a liver disease,” Phoebe said in a recent conversation, “and I know it’s not great. But I have not looked into it, because I think it would scare me the more I found out about what was happening to my body, and I’m in a very good place right now.”

“My family and I went back home to Maine and waited,” said Phoebe. “I believe it was seven months. We got a call from Boston Children’s that they had a liver for me, and I needed to go immediately. That’s where LifeFlight stepped in.”

The helicopter picked her up at the Union fairgrounds, which she remembers only as the place she would ride the Ferris wheel. Because of Phoebe, the fairground has become one of thousands of temporary landing zones that are recorded in LifeFlight’s database. “That’s where I was picked up, and we went to Children’s and got the transplant,” Phoebe said. “I’m so unbelievably thankful for it, because that’s how my [medical] story ended, and it’s been great from there.”