Nataline Sarkisyan (picture left, via) is a 17-year-old girl from Northridge, California. She was diagnosed with leukemia at age 14, and after two years of treatment the cancer went into remission.
When this summer the cancer came back, Nataline Sarkisyan's only sibling Bedig Sarkisyan donated his bone-marrow for the transplant. But Nataline developed a complication from the bone-marrow transplant and, because her liver was failing, doctors recommended a transplant.
However the insurer CIGNA initially denied the transplant for covering the expense, saying Nataline's plan does not cover "experimental, investigational and unproven services."
Possibly due to the pressure originating from the protest staged at outside CIGNA's office in Glendale by around 150 teenagers and nurses on Thursday, CIGNA decided to pay for a liver transplant that doctors said the girl needed.
Unfortunately, Nataline Sarkisyan who had been in a vegetative state for weeks couldn't survive to have a liver transplant. She died Thursday night at about 6 p.m. at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. Source: AP & Calnurses.org #Tags: nataline sarkisyan, death, liver transplant, cigna, insurer