Teen meets doctor who saved her life as an infant in 2001

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When Ashli Taylor was only an infant, she needed a life-saving operation, a liver transplant, in order to survive after she was diagnosed with a congenital birth defect that caused cirrhosis of the liver.

Now a freshman in high school, Taylor is living a normal life, and few people know about how her mother gave her part of her liver so that she could live on. But in September, Taylor wrote a letter to the doctor who performed the surgery that removed part of her mother’s liver as part of a creative writing assignment.

When Dr. Robert Goldstein read the letter, he was touched. “She is incredible to have sat down and done that,” he said.

So, on Monday morning, he drove down to Taylor’s high school to meet her for the first time.

“Ashli?” he asked, approaching her with flowers in his hands. “Guess who? Your mom’s surgeon. You wrote me a letter, Dr. Goldstein.”

“She moved me to the point where I wanted to give back,” Goldstein said. “I wanted her to realize her words had a real lasting impression.”

When the two met, Taylor was wiping away tears, and Goldstein had a hard time keeping his emotions in check as well. Both of them have been touched by that moment.