Idaho Falls woman celebrates transplant anniversaries

Jenny Everett Koelsch dealt with migraines in college and her doctors put her on medication. Turns out, it was larger dose than they should’ve given her. Which is how she found herself in the hospital with the possibility of dying.

“They had to put me on life support and they told my family she has 72 hours,” said Koelsch, who is now celebrating the tenth anniversary of both liver and kidney transplants. “About 48 hours into that they found a liver.”

The liver came from from a 63 year-old woman in Phoenix, Arizona. Koelsch later discovered her brother was getting to tested to become her kidney donor. He ended up being a match.

“When my brother gave me his kidney I almost felt kind of like this responsibility to get better fight because you know he’d given me this and I wanted to have him be proud,” said Koelsch.

Ten years later, Koelsch is the proud mother to 4 year old girl twins. When Koelsch wanted to start a family, doctors told her the medication she takes causes birth defects. Koelsch went through had her children through a surrogate mother with in vitro fertilization.

However, even after the transplants, Koelsch says she still experiences migraines at least once a month and she often gets very tired.

“Somedays it’s just hard you can’t explain that to a 4 year old why you don’t have energy”

If you would like to become an organ donor- the process is pretty simple. For more information, visit this link here.