"She's a very sweet lady," said 26-year-old Cody Corwin.
“It’s never been a matter of if I was going to do it; it was a matter of when I was going to do it.”
Those were the words of 26-year-old Cody Corwin of Michigan, who donated part of his liver to his girlfriend’s 71-year-old grandmother, who was going into liver failure.
Bernice Ramsey, 71, had been living with a genetic liver disease for five years and it took a turn for the worse last summer.
“We moved next door to them to help out,” Corwin told InsideEdition.com. “I didn’t know the severity of it until we got back from a family vacation in Ireland last August when she got really sick, falling into a coma.”
Corwin, who has been with Ramsey’s granddaughter Shelby Platt, 26, for the last three years, said he’s always known that no one in their family is a match to be a liver donor to Ramsey, and when he saw how devastated Platt was about the death of her aunt, who suffered from the same disease, he decided to get tested himself.
“She’s a very sweet lady,” Corwin said. “Knowing that I could help her in any way, I just knew I was going to do it. When the bell rings, you answer the door.”
When Corwin discovered he was a match, he went ahead with scheduling the surgery even though Platt and her family encouraged him to put more thought into the process.
Despite their protests, Corwin and Ramsey went under the knife on Feb. 25.
Corwin is now healing at home while Ramsey continues to be cared for at the hospital due to complications from diabetes.
“I was never really nervous for my health,” he said. “I was nervous that her body was going to reject the liver, but the liver’s in her, it’s working.”
He said he’s always considered himself part of the family, but the liver donation only brought them closer.
“Her grandma, every time she sees me, she lights up,” Corwin said. “She’s calling me her superhero.”
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