How an 18-year-old who died days before her wedding saved the lives of 3 fathers

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Jordyn Wilson was days away from her wedding when her fiancé took her to urgent care in Rexburg.

It was the week of Christmas 2021. Jordyn was having trouble breathing and felt weak. The 18-year-old BYU-Idaho student and her parents, Don and Tracy Wilson, assumed it was asthma or the fact she wasn’t eating enough in preparation for the big day.

“The urgent care did some tests and said she had bronchitis,” Don Wilson tells EastIdahoNews.com. “She left and collapsed in the parking lot on the way back to the van. Her fiancé took her to the emergency room, and that’s where she lost consciousness.”

Doctors at Madison Memorial Hospital did CPR for 15 minutes and got her pulse back. Jordyn was transferred to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, and Don and Tracy, who were in southern Utah, immediately drove to Idaho Falls to be with their daughter.

When they got to the hospital, they met a nurse named Bruce Taylor.

“When we walked into her room, Jordyn was twitching, and that was a side effect of her lack of oxygen,” Don recalls. “The first thing Bruce said to me was, ‘This is concerning. This is not a good sign.’ I was trying to get information, and the one thing I remember saying to Bruce was, ‘She’s not getting married next week, is she?’ He said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen.'”

Jordyn never regained consciousness and was declared brain dead on Christmas morning.

Instead of making final preparations for a wedding, the Wilsons had to plan a funeral for their daughter, a young woman who loved music, Taylor Swift and was known as “the decider” in her family.

“I think the fact she passed on Christmas was a blessing. Jordyn loved Christmas. It was her favorite thing,” Tracy says with a smile. “She would start at the beginning of November and I would have to tell her to take it to her bedroom by the time January came around. So her passing on Christmas Day is kind of poetic. It was her holiday.”

Jordyn loved serving others. Her parents have a video of their daughter jumping out of the car while sitting in a fast-food drive-thru to pick up litter someone dropped.

When approached by hospital staff and asked if they wanted to have Jordyn’s organs donated, Don and Tracy didn’t hesitate.

“We knew who she was. She served everywhere she went. If she had the chance to help someone else’s life, she would absolutely make that decision,” Don says. “We didn’t find out until after she passed that she had checked the box (on her driver’s license) to donate.”

Jordyn was flown to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City to have her organs transplanted to waiting recipients. Her parents will never forget seeing their daughter wheeled on a gurney before the flight to Utah.

“They were leaving and that’s a very hard moment to have that elevator door close,” Tracy recalls through tears. “One of the gentlemen pushing the gurney said, ‘We’ll take good care of her.’ For a mom, hearing that made a huge difference.”

The Wilsons were back at EIRMC Friday morning for the first time since their daughter died. The hospital hosted an event with Donor Connect to kick off National Donate Life Month. A special flag was raised outside EIRMC as a chaplain prayed, and Idaho Falls Mayor Lisa Burtenshaw, whose mother received a donor heart, read a proclamation designating April as Donate Life Month.

“This is the month we set aside to recognize the miracle of organ, eye and tissue donation,” said Alex McDonald of Donnor Connect. “There are 100,000 people waiting in the US for life-saving transplants. One donor can save up to eight lives, and one tissue donor can help 75 people. It’s huge what one person can do.”

Tina Watson of Shelley spoke at the event. She is alive today because of a young woman who donated her liver and kidney 27 years ago.

“My donor, Katie, was a BYU student in Provo, Utah. She and some friends had gone skiing and while she was coming down the hill, she got caught in her skis and tripped and slid down the hill,” Watson says. “When she came to a stop, she hit a tree at the base of her skull and didn’t wake up from that moment on.”

Read the rest of the story here

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