Son's Death Gives Mom New Life

An Oak Forest woman was faced with a choice she wished she would never need to make.

Rose Perry, 50, stood before a doctor who said her 24-year-old son Ronald was brain dead after suffering a severe stroke, and would she like to donate his organs. Perry, who herself was in desperate need of a kidney transplant, initially declined—until her husband and youngest son suggested the two might be a match.

One test later, the results revealed that doctors “had never seen such a perfect match.”

A diabetic since she was 29 years old, Perry learned last August that she was in Stage 5 renal failure, in need of both dialysis and a kidney transplant to save her life. Doctors say the transplant instantly doubled her lifespan.

“I know that he lives on because he is part of me now,” Perry said. “I will always have him, he’ll always be a part of me.”

Perry is still struggling to accept that the “kindest, most big-hearted person you’d ever meet” is gone, but knowing that a piece of him remains with her has brought solace. She was hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer the day Ronald walked downstairs and alerted his father that he didn’t feel well. He appeared unsteady as his knees wobbled, and his father urged him to sit down. There, he reassured Ronald, and thought his son had calmed when he felt his head rest against him.

But Ronald had suffered a cardiac arrest. He was taken into surgery at Palos Community Hospital, where he was put into a medically induced coma. He later suffered a severe stroke that caused bleeding in his brain, also ceasing his brain activity. He died May 16.

Dr. Deepak Mital, surgical director of Advocate Christ Medical Center’s Kidney Transplant Program, told Perry that although her son had lost his life, his kidney could save hers.

“I didn’t want to give up my son to get his kidney,” Perry said. “I didn’t want that.”

Without the transplant, it’s possible Perry would have waited up to five years for another match—and it’s unlikely she could have survived that long on dialysis.

“He was just an amazing kid,” Perry said of her son. “I know that he lives on in me, and is watching over me.”

Culver’s in Crestwood, 13300 Cicero Ave. will host a fund raiser for the Perry family. On Monday, June 1, from 5 to 8 p.m., a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the family.