Seven-year-old Heather McNamara of Long Island, N. Y. headed home Tuesday after recuperating for a month in the hospital post a high-risk surgery that allowed doctors to remove a baseball-sized tumor which necessitated temporarily removing organs from her digestive tract.

Surgeons at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York City referred to the procedure as an "auto-transplantation" as it involved the removal of Heather's own organs as opposed to a donor's organs, being removed and re-implanted four hours later.

Six of Heather's vital organs were removed during a 23-hour surgery on Feb. 6, and the risky procedure was the first of its kind to be performed on a child. Dr. Steven Lobritto, an internist, pediatrician and gastroenterologist with Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital said the procedure was essential to save Heather's life Lobritto, who worked with lead surgeon Dr. Tomoaki Kato and others from New York-Presbyterian on Heather's case said, "The child had an inoperable tumor that was unresponsive to chemo. The operation gave us a chance to cure her, but it was difficult to achieve, and it could have killed her."

He said attempts had been made previously to remove the tumor which was wrapped around Heather's stomach, spleen, pancreas and essential blood vessels, but had failed. "She's left with a number of deficiencies (from the operation)," he said. "But all-in-all, we gave her a pretty normal life."

In the tricky 23-hour operation which involved three different carefully coordinated surgical teams, doctors first removed the stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, large intestine and small intestine along with the entwined tumor, placed the organs on ice with preservation solution, and then proceeded to extract the tumor while simultaneously preparing the body to receive the re-implanted organs. Many of her blood vessels also had to be removed and reconstructed from other vessels in the body or artificially.

Kato said his thoughts during the surgery went to "If this doesn't work, there's nothing left. We were confident, but also prepared," he added. "You don't know until you begin the operation, whether or not when you take the organs out, if you will be able to reconstruct them and put them back in; if not, she will not survive. That was our biggest challenge," he said.

"Other cancer hospitals had tried to remove the tumor, but couldn't do it," Lobritto explained. "In order to successfully remove a tumor, you have remove, not only the tumor, but also a marginal amount of the normal tissue around it. In this case, you couldn't do that without removing and re-transplanting the organs. Our surgeons are transplant experts, which is why we did it here."

Doctors were unable to re-implant Heather's pancreas, spleen and stomach as the tumor had become so invasive. As a result Heather is now diabetic and will require insulin and pancreatic enzyme replacement medication.

The surgeons created a stomach for Heather by crafting a pouch from intestinal tissue that will hold food before it moves into the small intestine. This means that she will have to eat small meals, akin to gastric bypass surgery for weight loss patients.

Heather will also have to take nutritional supplements such as B12 and calcium as well as penicillin for a few months to ward off infections that the lack of a spleen makes her more susceptible to, Kato said.

She also has a stoma, a direct opening through the skin that allows a small bag connected to her bowels to aid in the removal of stool. This is to protect her sutures against infection and damage, but Kato expects to surgically remove the stoma in early May.

Heather will be tube fed while doctors monitor her and make sure her bowel is working properly. Kato said her biggest challenge is going to be controlling her diabetes. "Nutritionally and growth-wise, she will be pretty normal," he said.

When asked by her father what she is going to do when she gets home, Heather answered, "Play with my dog, Angel, and play with my sister."