Donor Sibling Married to Lung Transplant Recipient (Exclusive)

• Jennifer Ellis was born with a rare condition in which her organs are inverted, a condition that often affects the lungs.
• She needed a lung transplant, but ended up bonding with the family of her lung donor, a medical manager named Jill Ellis.
• In September of this year, she married Jill's younger brother Travis Ellis

Most transplant recipients never meet the donor's family.

“We kind of broke the rules,” Jennifer Ellis exclusively tells PEOPLE. When she first contacted the family of the woman who received her lungs, “they were able to get enough information from my letter to do a few Google searches,” she said. I say.

“When I got the message from Facebook, I was so happy that they understood who I was,” Jennifer, now 40, tells PEOPLE. “I wanted to meet them.”

After her family visited West Virginia, Jennifer flew to Wisconsin to visit the family of Jill Ellis, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Ellis' lungs had been transplanted at the Cleveland Clinic.

“When I arrived at her house, I was so overwhelmed with emotion,” she tells PEOPLE. “She seemed really happy to be home. I know it was her. It was like we brought her home.”

“She was definitely there with me,” Jennifer says. She had no idea she was in the early stages of meeting her future husband, Jill's brother Travis.

“Her mother always said, 'I think Jill and God planned it.'

She explains: “Jill was really always trying to hook him up with someone. Every time they went out to a bar or something, she was always trying to hook him up with someone.”

Jennifer's path to a transplant began at birth. She was born with the unusual perception of sitting backwards. cleveland clinic According to the description, it is “the development of the thoracic and abdominal organs in the opposite position to their normal anatomy.”

The complication of this is that Primary ciliary dyskinesiaThis affects “cilia, tiny hair-like organs that help remove mucus from the body.”

“I had ear infections, pneumonia, asthma over the years. I just had a lot of respiratory issues,” Jennifer tells PEOPLE.

In the end, it was decided that a transplant was inevitable.

“For me, a young 32-year-old, a lung transplant just sounds like a death sentence,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was just scared.”

However, in 2017, Jennifer contracted an Aspergillus infection. cleveland clinic It explains that it is a fungal infection that affects people with weakened lungs and immune systems.

“Then I was officially on oxygen 24/7,” she said, adding: “I didn't want to get into machines. So I said, 'Okay, send me to Cleveland.' ”

On September 15, 2019, she underwent a lung transplant at the Cleveland Clinic. Then, “they took out the tube, and I would say it's just like the biggest deep breath.”

“Before, my breathing was so shallow. When I took this breath, it was this deep breath… It felt like I was sucking in air forever.”

His family said, “Even his laughter sounded so different because of the amount of air he was breathing in.''

When Jennifer finally reached out to Jill's family, they said, In fact, I reached out to friends, family, doctors, and everyone who was involved in my care before my transplant. I wanted them to know that what Jill did didn't just save my life, it saved my best friend's life, my daughter's life, and my cousin's life. ”

“I wanted to let her know that my life meant something to so many people and that we are all so grateful for what she did.”

And when she met the family, “there was an instant connection.” [like] I have known them all my life. It was crazy. ”

Jennifer tells PEOPLE that the encounter was therapeutic for both her and Jill's families. “We cried right away. But there was this sense of relief because I had a lot of survivor's guilt and they had a lot of grief.”

“It was such a beautiful, powerful moment, and from that moment on. We never stopped talking and I was part of their family,” she says. Jill's sister, Nikki, invited her to the wedding, and that's when “Travis and I became really close.”

In June 2023, less than a year after their wedding, the couple decided to try their hand at romance. And this past September 28th, the couple got married, and a table was held to honor everyone who couldn't attend the wedding, including Jill.

“We had a front row seat for her and we had pictures of her on display,” she says. “My father is a pastor, so he said we are forever grateful to Jill. She was also at the ceremony.”

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Also included: “Hero Table. The people who made the biggest difference in my life were the doctors and nurses.”

“A really incredible thing happened before Travis and I started dating,” Jennifer tells PEOPLE. “I had to be born sick, I had to be sick if I got sick, I had to be on the list if I got sick, I mean, it's totally unrealistic.”

“I don't think that's possible because our story is so unique.” [Jill] I didn't touch that. ”