It was a must for Ashley to have a liver transplant while she was a little baby because she was born with congenital cirrhosis of the liver. Nearly her whole life as a toddler was spent in a hospital ward, with tubes and cords on her body. It was until 15 years later when she was at a college when her classmates knew of her her troubled backstory. It all happened in a creative writing class when she drafted a letter to Dr. Robert Goldstein, the surgeon who gave her a second and better chance in life. Actually, if it were not for the operation that was carried out by Dr. Robert Goldstein and the donation of the kidney by her mother, she would have only lived a couple of months.
For one of her assignments, she wrote a letter thanking Dr. Goldstein. It’d been many years since her life-saving surgery and she never got the chance to speak with him.
One day, while she was sitting in her theater arts class at Temple High School when a man in hospital scrubs and a ponytail walked into the room holding a bouquet of flowers. What followed was a tear-jerking moment that went viral, reminding people the importance of organ donation and human connection.
