Baby Cared for by 80 Different Nurses During 185-Day Hospital Stay While Awaiting Lifesaving Transplant

At 2 months old, Mattie Beacham was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts

It takes a village — or in this case, a "warrior squad" of 80 determined nurses.

When Allison and Michael Beacham brought their then-2-month-old baby daughter Mattie to Orlando's AdventHealth for Children, she was critically ill and battling for her life. Diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts that affects infants, Mattie needed a lifesaving liver transplant.

But initially, she was too sick to even be placed on the waitlist. "Her liver was dying by the hour," Allison recalls to PEOPLE. "Michael and I spiraled, entering a new dimension of flight, advocacy and, of course, fear."

Mattie would spend 185 days — half a year — in the hospital, during which time every single one of the 80 nurses who worked in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) cared for her in some way. Those nurses never stopped fighting for Mattie, even as her situation seemed hopeless.

At her sickest, Mattie's organs began shutting down and she went into a coma. Eventually, her heart stopped. Medical staff performed CPR and brought her back, but Allison and Michael were given some heartbreaking news.

"Chaplains repeatedly came in with the doctors telling us that Mattie would not last more than four hours and that it was time to let her go," Allison says. "But it wasn’t time for consolation yet; it was time for battle."

While Mattie remained in a coma, Allison remembers finding solace in morning runs outside the hospital before rounds began in Mattie's unit. "I’d jog and reflect and pump myself up to be the best mom and advocate that I could possibly be as I came to terms with the dire reality," she says.

But she and Michael were far from alone. Their daughter's team of dedicated doctors and nurses rallied around them through it all.

"Joe, Amanda, Kim, Niki, Caila, Eric, Hannah … instead of being 'another nurse in scrubs,' they became Mattie’s warrior squad, determined to find solutions to one of the most complicated patients in the history of the liver transplant program," Allison tells PEOPLE.

"They wept, they nurtured, they even laughed with us at brief moments of levity," she continues. "Their wet brows and huddles assured us they were thinking outside of the box to bring back to life our precious, unresponsive angel, who was still only alive artificially."

Even nurses who were not part of Mattie's care team showed their support.

"Nurses who weren’t assigned to Mattie on day or night shift asked to be with her. Nurses not in the Critical Care Unit would come visit in between their patients," Allison says. "The AdventHealth team understood us, respected us and fought for Mattie as if she were their own."

Never giving up, the nurses even pushed to try experimental or never-before-used treatments on Mattie.

"One of the nurses — Amanda [Hellner] — helped engineer a tandem dialysis and plasmapheresis machine that had only been done once in the country, according to them," Allison says. "The doctors initially didn’t want to try it as the risks were too great. But the nurses rallied with us and convinced the administration to try this unknown and unproven technique."

“It really tested us as a PICU," nurse Nikki Sapp says. "But if there’s something we can do, we’re going to try, and sometimes that one treatment that we’ve never done is what is going to save their life."

The risky technique worked — and proved to be a turning point for Mattie, who eventually stabilized and grew healthy enough to undergo the transplant surgery once an organ match was found. Hellner, the PICU's nurse educator at the time, remembers being in the room when Mattie opened her eyes for the first time following the 10-hour procedure.

"It’s just one of the moments you live for as a nurse, and that was one I’ll never forget,” she says. “I’ll carry that always with me in my career. She’s become part of my why.”

These days, Mattie — who turned 2 in December — is "the happiest human," according to her proud mom.

"She finds boo-boos on us that we don’t even know we have. She hugs strangers' legs. She kisses even when she shouldn't," Allison says. "She blows kisses to everyone at AdventHealth."

As for the toddlers' nurses? They are forever "family" to the Beachams.

"They’ve come to two of her birthday soirées and blew the roof off of our house. The parties were as much of a celebration of Mattie's birthday as they were a celebration for her healthcare heroes," Allison tells PEOPLE.

After Mattie's experience, Allison says she has newfound appreciation for the work that nurses do and the dedication and compassion they show — both to their patients and their families.

"My reason for even existing has changed, thanks to learning, feeling and understanding how nurses are wired. To work 12 hours with some of the most intense and complicated situations imaginable —nurses bring perspective to how we want, and should, live our lives," Allison says.