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Mom of organ donor meets man who received her son's heart

@ # State
 Mom_of_organ_donor

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) - A mother facing a heartbreaking loss had a bittersweet meeting at UT Medical Center with a man who survived thanks to a lifesaving gift.

Don Reed humbly waited with a bouquet of flowers for the mom of the 32-year-old whose heart now beats in his chest.

After a serious motorcycle crash, Terri Tyson's son Christopher was airlifted to UT Medical Center. There was too much head trauma and Christopher was declared brain dead on November 3. His organs were harvested that night so on November 5, they could make their way to Vanderbilt where Reed would get the heart he'd been waiting over two years for, 23 years after Reed's original heart swelled to three times its normal size.

"2014 they put an LVAD in me and my heart swelled even more. I had the machine keeping me alive for two years,"
said Reed.
"Even more scary was the transplant. Great doctors and all this, but just knowing that somebody else had to die that I may live."

"People are in tragic accidents all the time and the organs are buried with them and I didn't want that to happen. And once I knew there was no hope for Christopher to come out of this, I wanted his organs to go to someone else to help them have a better, healthier life," said Tyson.

Christopher's sister Jessica has her brother's heartbeat forever tattooed on her feet, using his ashes to ink his last heartbeats from his monitor strip. Terri Tyson got to hear that heartbeat one more time.

"It brought back a lot of memories. It just flashed everything and the heart was in my womb for nine months so it was awesome,"
said Tyson.

They were surrounded by a room full of hospital staff who all played some role in the transferring of Christopher's heart to Reed's chest, in a way, coming full circle with both patients.

"I want him back, but in a way I kind of do, in a way, have him back because his heart is beating in this man's chest,"
said Tyson.

"My biggest concern with meeting the family is whether or not they'd find me worthy to have his heart,"
said Reed.
"Organ donors do make a difference. They really do. My wife knows that if something happens, take whatever anybody needs."

Both of Christopher's kidneys as well as his liver were harvested and transplanted as well, according to Donate Life Tennessee.