Jen Dell Beni,left, and her co-worker Greg Edwards talk about his decision to donate part of his liver to her Thursday at the Lower Macungie Township Library. They are both library assistants at the library. < br/> Courtesy of The Morning Call
Jen Dell Beni and Greg Edwards will walk together through the doors of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center as coworkers, one healthy, one ill.
They will leave separately, but if all goes according to plan they will return to the Lehigh Valley in full health and sharing more than a common workplace at the Lower Macungie Township library.
They will share Edwards’ liver.
Edwards, 25, volunteered to donate a portion of his to Dell Beni, 32, who is stricken with cirrhosis of the liver. Doctors don’t know what caused the vital organ to falter in 2004, when her symptoms began.
Since then, she has gone through a series of misdiagnoses — gall stones, obstructed bile ducts. Her symptoms of itchiness, jaundice, weight loss, vitamin deficiency and pain worsened through the years of tried and failed remedies, both medical and surgical.