An East Texas woman is alive after coming within hours of death and she's thanking her guardian angel, who had to make a life and death decision of her own to keep the woman alive.
Brenda Jones, 69, had waited seven months to get the news that she's next on the list for a new liver, but then her doctors at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas had to ask her a question they say they've never asked a patient before: Would she be willing to give the liver to someone else?
Jones's answer? Yes.
"I had time to wait and she didn't have any time to wait, so that was just common sense," is how Jones described her decision to give the liver she was about to receive to a stranger, 23-year-old Abigail Flores of Quitman, Texas.
At the same time Jones was prepping for her surgery in a few weeks, Flores was being air-lifted to Baylor Dallas with complete liver failure and doctors believed she would only survive a few hours if she didn’t receive a new liver.
"The doctor called me at 3:30 a.m. and he explained her situation and that she wouldn't be alive in a few hours, and that the liver I was going to get was a match for her," Jones said.
"All I could think about was that I had more time to wait a little longer on a liver and she didn't have any time. If I had taken the liver, and she had died when I could have saved her and got another liver, I just knew that's what I had to do," explained Jones.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
"It makes me feel good because my husband and I, we just got married and we want to have kids. She gave me the opportunity to be able to do that later on in life," Flores said in tears.
Jones's life saving decision was rewarded in a big way.
Within four days later, doctors found her a match and she underwent liver transplant surgery.
"Everything just kind of fell right into line. I mean, you have to wait for a liver a long time. I had to wait four days and I was able to save her," said Jones.
Both have now received new livers and recovered in rooms across from one another at the hospital.
