Rabia Anjum, who lives with her husband Zuhaib in Bedford Park, donated a segment of her liver to her 8-month-old son, Jahanzaib, in December after his own organ was failing from a rare congenital disease.“I didn’t have a choice,” the courageous 26-year-old mother said. “I had to be brave for my son.”Like any expectant parents, the young couple — who have family in Pakistan but met in the Bronx, where they were working for discount retailer Rainbow — were just hoping for a happy, healthy child.It was only after Jahanzaib’s birth that they discovered he had Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestatis, a hereditary disease that causes rapid liver failure. It affects only one in 100,000 children.To complicate matters, the tot was born with Sidus Diversis — an abnormality where the organs are on the opposite sides of the body. Doctors at Montefiore’s Moses campus admitted the infant and placed him on a children’s transplant list.“We were really shocked and stunned,” Zuhaib said of the diagnoses. “We decided that we’d stick by each other and put everything in God’s hands.” But the longer they waited for a liver for Jahanzaib, the worse he got — his eyes were jaundiced and he was crying yellow tears.The couple decided not to wait any longer — little Jahanzaib was failing fast and Rabia was a perfect match, though donating part of her liver to her son meant she would spend weeks recovering, leaving the primary caretaking to her husband.“It was the worst time in my life,” he said, referring Dec. 4, the day his wife and son were both on the operating table.Both surgeries went well, and Jahanzaib was discharged two weeks later. Two months after the surgeries, the only sign that the child overcame a life-threatening illness is a thin red scar along his abdomen.The change was drastic. Days after the surgery, Jahanzaib’s eyes cleared, and he started gaining weight. Theyoung parents began stitching their dreams back together.“I feel very excited now,” said Rabia, who has a medal from the state for being an organ donor. “He’s so energetic now, he’s gaining weight, he smiles at me.”It was perhaps a stroke of luck that the Anjum family lives so close to Montefiore, which was uniquely equipped with a state-of-the-art pediatric transplant unit kitty-corner to the Montefiore Einstein Center for Transplantation.A team of specialists including Dr. Debora Kogan-Liberman, a pediatric liver specialist, and transplant surgeons Sarah Bellemare, Dominique Jan and Milan Kinkhabwala, operated on mother and baby. The reverse positioning of Jahanzaib’s organs added another degree of difficulty.“All of the elements had to move perfectly, like a symphony,” Kinkhabwala said. “Especially in parent-to-child, it’s very complicated way to transplant a liver.”Dr. Kogan is extremely optimistic about the boy’s progress, saying his liver is “working so beautifully” only two months after the operation. “It’s been nothing but a pleasure to take care of them,” she said, praising Rabia for being “so strong.”Zuhaib’s father, Suhail Anjum, was overflowing with emotion over his grandson’s remarkable recovery. “I owe the doctors and nurses here my life,” the proud grandfather said. “There are no words to say thank you.”(nydailynews.com)ANN.Az