KUTZTOWN, Pa. – In her Kutztown home, Diane Fegely keeps an old newspaper article. It’s yellowed over time, but then again, it’s almost 18 years old now. The story is about her. It’s also about a young man in his late teens.
“I think about him all the time,” Fegely shared. “I do things. I might meet someone who doesn’t remember that I’ve had this situation, and we’ll get talking about something and it does. It hits me many times.”
Just after her son’s wedding in 1999, the wife and mother of two discovered she had an auto-immune disease that was destroying her liver. Fegely was put on a transplant list and went to Pittsburgh when she got the call.
Doctors gave her a new liver. It came from a teenager who died in a car accident.
“I do not know the young fellow’s name,” Fegely said, adding that his family made the choice to donate the 18-year-old’s organs.
“My children were just slightly older than that, so it really took a toll on me to realize that yes, I was given this special gift, but his family suffered,” she said tearfully.