In November 2024, Autumn Grable posted on Facebook that she needed a liver transplant. Heather Boyle saw the post and started testing as a donor for Grable, who was her daughter’s former gymnastics coach. When she was approved, she reached out to Grable with three words that changed her life: “I’m a match.”
When 29-year-old Melissa McKenney saw her high school friend Brayden’s post on Facebook asking for a living liver donor, she knew she had to step forward. “I felt in my soul that this was my journey. I knew it had to be done and that I was the one to do it.”
If it weren’t for my bedtime scroll in December 2023, I would have missed the news story about kids at Children’s Hospital Colorado waiting for a liver transplant. It featured a woman who donated part of her liver to help a child she didn’t know, and encouraged healthy adults to be tested as potential donors.
When 65-year-old Lee found out that a family member needed a liver transplant, he knew he needed to do something to help. “They didn’t ask me to become their donor—I offered,” Lee says. In this Q&A, Lee shares more about his experience becoming a living liver donor.
Marissa Kauffman and Eliana “Elie” Tibbs, both suffering from liver failure, were given a second chance at life with the help of two very selfless individuals, through what doctors are saying was the first paired exchange liver transplant ever performed in Utah.
Sometimes, the people who save your life come from the most unexpected places. For Sonya Bradley, it was her daughter’s best friend, who donated part of her liver at Vanderbilt University Medical Center one year ago to replace Bradley’s failing one.
When 42-year-old Steven Register was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer and told he needed a liver transplant, his wife turned to Facebook to find a donor. The post reached someone he hadn’t spoken to in 20 years—Kristin Johnston, a former high-school classmate who volunteered to donate.
Giving always came naturally for Miami University’s Anna Ressler, but a decision she made last year to help a faculty member who needed a liver transplant began a journey that changed multiple lives and initiated a first-time cooperative effort between two major hospitals.
