When we meet Gretchen in Surgery Saved My Life, she is awaiting the arrival of six vital organs: pancreas, stomach, small intestine, liver and duodenum. She has been sick for 14 years, unable to eat on her own, riddled with tubes that perform functions that your body no longer can. Finding a donor with a full set of organs seems like a long shot.

She is suffering from a rare disease called chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a stomach disorder that tricks her body into thinking she can't digest anything. It leaves her in constant pain, her body failing. Dr. Kareem Abu-Elmagd is her best chance at a life without pain and tubes. After Gretchen misses five opportunities for transplantation, the sixth brings her the six organs she desperately needs. Dr. Kareem successfully disembowels Gretchen in a complex surgery, replacing her diseased organs with new ones.

"The best part is that pain no longer controls my life," Gretchen says six months after her surgery.

"Sometimes she just turns around with her arms open, saying 'I'm free," her mother Joan reports.

In the show, Joan says that she would like for her daughter to have a life; it seems that she does now. Gretchen now weighs a healthy 104 pounds, up from a frail 67 pounds. She drives herself to the lab for blood work and stops at the store to run quick errands. She has returned to her hobby of painting. But most of all she has resumed eating on her own.

She enjoys spare ribs, coleslaw, rice, fruits and vegetables, not to mention doughnuts and sugar cookies. In particular, she craves a brown bag lunch, like the ones she ate in school.

"After surgery, I just really wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with potato chips and juice or pop," she says. Gretchen liked pb and j before she got sick, but not as much as she does now. She wonders sometimes if this craving comes from her donor.

Gretchen and her mother would very much like to meet the family of their donor. However, they have to await the family's consent.

"We'd love for them to see what their loved one's organs have done for Gretchen," Joan says. "We are so grateful."

Gretchen still sees Dr. Kareem every two weeks, making the five-hour drive from Rochester to Pittsburgh for biopsies and other check-ups. But now she doesn't have to stay for days, almost weeks, in a nearby hotel room praying for an end to her pain.

As it turns out others were praying for Gretchen as well, including a nun from her hometown. During a trip to Rome, the sister left Gretchen's picture in the crypt of Pope John Paul II, on the very same day as her surgery.