Liberty nursing student provides life-giving care for mother as liver transplant donor

Emma Boyd, a junior in Liberty University’s School of Nursing, is currently pursuing her dream career of caring for others and saving lives, but she has already made a significant impact on her own family.

A few years ago, Emma stepped up to donate a part of her liver to her mother, Jennifer, who suffered from cirrhosis. What makes their story even more remarkable is that Emma was adopted as a baby, and because many of her mother’s biological family members also had the disease, Emma was an ideal donor.

When Emma was young, she lived in South Korea, Italy, The Azores Islands (Portugal), and Germany, where her mother was a teacher for children of military service members and Department of Defense civilian employees. It was during their time in Naples when Jennifer first saw signs of her condition when she had difficulty riding a bike one day. She now knows she was probably suffering from hepatic encephalopathy, a brain disorder that develops in some individuals with cirrhosis of the liver. The family visited the U.S. for testing, but Jennifer was misdiagnosed and continued to struggle. They eventually moved to Florida and six months later, in 2010, she was diagnosed with cirrhosis.

Thanks to medication, Jennifer was able to stay below the threshold of needing a transplant and kept her levels in check for about 11 years. But in the fall of 2021, one week into Emma’s freshman year at Liberty, Emma received a call that her mother’s liver had worsened. A transplant wouldn’t be needed immediately, but it was now much more likely.

Emma spent the next summer making weekly drives with her mother from her home in Fort Myers to Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital three hours away, where her mother had to have 12 to 15 pounds of fluid drained at every visit. Emma was tested for transplant compatibility.

“There was someone else who was looking like they could be the transplant (donor), my mom’s cousin who was 60 years old, but I felt in my heart that God was saying, ‘No, Emma, you’re going to be the one to do it,’” Emma said. “It took some time to wait to hear if I’d be a match, but finally they called me and said I’m a match. I remember I sat in my room and cried for a few hours because I (realized), ‘I have to do this now. I’m going to be the one to provide the transplant.’ I was scared.”

The figurative checklist to make the transplant happen was God-ordained, Emma said, but involved a lot of “no” along the way, too.

Jennifer had always wanted to have children but never married. She thought God was telling her no to parenthood but was then given the opportunity to adopt Emma and her siblings Savannah and Jacob. The siblings were not compatible for a transplant, and when Emma’s tests came back as a perfect match for liver donation, Jennifer knew her adoption was more of a blessing than she imagined.

“Through my mom’s testimony, I see why all of her ‘nos’ were for a reason,” Emma said. “I think it’s such a miracle in her story of how everything led up to this and how it ended up working out. I think it’s amazing, and I’ve got to remind myself when I start questioning why God’s no is a no that I’ll probably know the reason later on.”

The original plan was to conduct the transplant procedure over Emma’s winter break of sophomore year, which she requested so that she could complete her first semester within the nursing program, but the timeline shrunk when Jennifer’s need became more pressing.

“They said that Christmas break would work, but she might not make it that long,” Emma said. “Sure enough, that fall I got a call saying, ‘We can’t wait any longer, it’ll be on Oct. 26, we’ll see you then.’ I didn’t have a choice, but I wanted to help my mom, so I drove down as soon as I could, and my professors were great about it.”

The surgeons transferred 60 percent of Emma’s liver to her mother in a successful surgery, though Jennifer had to be placed in a coma for five days for her body to adjust to the results.

“I wasn’t able to see her for five days, which was scary to deal with because I didn’t want it all to be for nothing, but it turned out well in the end,” Emma said. “They also put her on dialysis since her kidneys were failing after compensating for so long for her poor liver, but she was able to get off dialysis, which is a miracle. Now, she goes and gets her blood work done once a month and her blood work looks great.”

Emma said that by the end of her own eight-day hospital stay, her liver had already grown back to 80 percent. Emma returned to Liberty and her courses a few days later.

She said her friends from Liberty called to check on her, and she is grateful for the support her family has received.

“I just have such amazing professors who care and still ask me about everything that’s going on and how I’m doing. The people here have really opened my eyes and changed my life, and I will have longtime friends from this school.”

Emma said she was ultimately inspired to become a nurse through her mother’s experience; all the regular medical appointments introduced her to the profession and the people who make life-changing differences in others’ lives. She is now interested in either trauma nursing or becoming a transplant nurse practitioner.

“The teams that helped us — the pre-transplant team and post-transplant team — they became like family to us,” Emma said. “I still check in with them, they are amazing people. I want to work with them soon.”