A perfect match: Organ donor marries the woman he saved

CTV News Channel: Liver transplant turns to love A liver transplant turned into a perfect love match for strangers Heather Krueger and Chris Dempsey.

In March 2014, Heather Krueger was diagnosed with stage four liver disease and told she didn’t have very much time left to live. She was only 24 years old and the prognosis was grim. Krueger needed to find a living donor.

After months of disappointment while she was on the waiting list, Krueger had a match.

On March 16, 2015, Chris Dempsey donated half of his liver to Krueger. More than a year later, he married her.

Dempsey, 38, told CTV News Channel from Frankfort, Ill. on Wednesday, that he heard about Krueger’s predicament from a co-worker, who happened to be her cousin, in the break room of his job as a code enforcement officer.

“I thought to myself, if I was in that situation I would want someone to help me or my family,” Dempsey said. “I decided to get the information from him (his co-worker) and I called the university hospital and started the process of getting tested.”

His timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Krueger told CTV News Channel that, about a month before the transplant surgery, her doctors told her that she had very few working liver cells left.

“If I hadn’t gotten the live donor, Chris, they said I wouldn’t have made it,” Krueger said.

At the start of February 2015, the strangers met for the first time a week after Dempsey had called her to inform her that he was a match for the transplant. They had lunch near Dempsey’s work and talked about their upcoming procedure.

After a successful eight-hour surgery in March 2015, the couple spent a lot of time together in the hospital as they recuperated. Krueger said their relationship grew deeper and they developed romantic feelings for each other during the recovery process. She said they both knew how the other was feeling and they were able to support each other.

“I just knew he was the one,” Krueger said. “We just went through everything together.”

Dempsey proposed to Krueger on a chilly evening in December 2015, after taking her on a horse and carriage ride in Chicago. The healthy couple wed on Oct. 15, topping off a love story that Krueger described as a miracle.

“Everyone just said that an angel was watching over me,” Krueger gushed. “It’s just a fairytale. My wedding was a fairytale.”