ANN ARBOR, Mich. – When you look up “giver” in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Phil Consiglio.
Each year, just .002 percent of the U.S. population will become a living organ donor. Consiglio is now part of an even more exclusive club of people who have donated twice -- both times to a stranger.
Consiglio is a Woodhaven native and a pediatric surgical nurse at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
He said one of his very first patients inspired this life-changing journey.
A bond formed during COVID
Consiglio began his nursing career at the height of the COVID pandemic, caring for adults in a COVID intensive care unit. He soon developed a special bond with one of his patients.
“We would talk. We would watch the Lions games together. Everything, he, honest to God, became my best friend,” Consiglio said.
But the patient’s health took a terrible turn.
“He ended up on a ventilator, but he was still conscious,” Consiglio said. “He writes to me, ‘Hey, the doctors are telling me my kidneys aren’t doing so well.’”
Consiglio’s response was immediate.
“I said, ‘Hey, don’t even worry about it, I’ll give mine.’ I meant it fully,” Consiglio said. “He ended up passing away in the middle of November of 2020, and that was the last conversation we had. It was devastating losing him, to be really honest. And above anything else, that promise stuck in my head.”
A promise kept -- and then some
In January of 2022, Consiglio reached out to the University of Michigan Transplant Center. Later that year, he donated a kidney to an anonymous recipient.
“It was the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire life,” Consiglio said. “More than a blessing, more than anything I could have ever hoped for in my life.”
But he wasn’t finished.
After working on pediatric transplant surgeries at Mott, Consiglio decided he wanted to donate part of his liver to a child.
“July of 24, I got my clearance for surgery,” he said. “And on Halloween, I got my match.”
Unbeknownst to him, his match wasn’t far away.
Two-year-old Quinnlyn Smith was a patient at Mott, desperately in need of a new liver. She was born with propionic acidemia, a metabolic condition that caused toxins to build up in her blood. Quinnlyn was in the hospital constantly and had suffered a stroke.
Her mother, Kelly Smith, said the wait was extremely emotional.
“It was one of the hardest moments in our life to wait for that liver,” Smith said. “It was very difficult to think that somebody else was losing their baby, so that mine could survive.”
Smith prayed a living donor could be found instead. Consiglio was the answer to that prayer.
Answered prayers and a new life
“We got the phone call on Halloween,” Smith said. “Telling us that they had a living donor that was willing to donate a piece of their organ, and I was, I think I was in complete shock.”
On December 2, 2024, Consiglio donated part of his liver to Quinnlyn.
Neither side was allowed to know anything about the other. Smith desperately wanted to know who the donor was.
“The entire stay in the hospital, I kept asking daily, weekly, anytime I saw the doctors,” she said.
A year later, all of that has changed, starting with their emotional first meeting.
“I was just in tears,” Smith said. “I couldn’t stop thanking him over and over again.”
Consiglio is now part of Quinnlyn’s family — and vice versa.
“We were family from the start,” Smith said. “It was like we were long lost relatives, that we knew each other, and it was just crazy.”
Consiglio is especially thrilled to finally have a brother in Quinnlyn’s brother, Wyatt.
“It makes me so happy,” Consiglio said. “They’re a phenomenal family.”
Quinnlyn is doing amazing and hasn’t been hospitalized for illness all year.
“It’s just milestones after milestones that she’s meeting,” Smith said. “Before, she wasn’t even talking, and now, she’s saying things.”
A surgeon’s hope: “Flip the wait list around”
Transplant surgeon Dr. Meredith Barrett said Quinnlyn’s experience is a testament to how life-altering living donation can be.
“My goal would be to eventually flip the wait list around,” Barrett said. “So instead of having children waiting on organs, we have donors waiting on kids who need organs.”
As one of Consiglio’s coworkers, she said she’s most impressed by his heart.
“I think that that obviously comes from an incredible heart,” Barrett said. “An incredible desire to help your fellow human, especially someone you don’t even know.”
Consiglio recovered well from both of his surgeries.
He said his family has been supportive of his donations.
“My mom, being a nurse, she was also sort of nervous,” Consiglio said. “I told her both times, ‘The one thing you’re not gonna do is talking me out of it.’ And she said, ‘Okay.’”
Consiglio said he’s not done yet.
“I still donate blood regularly. I was just put on the bone marrow registry, and I am also going to try and find a way to talk Dr. Barrett into working me up for pancreas donations, although that is exceedingly rare,” said Consiglio.
For now, seeing Quinnlyn making strides is the greatest gift.
“Having the opportunity to give somebody that second shot at life that they so well deserve is, I don’t have the words for it, almost a year later,” Consiglio said. “It is indescribably beautiful, and it is the absolute joy of my life that I got to do it.”
How rare is donating twice?
Double organ donors like Consiglio are incredibly rare. One study finds there have only been about 100 since 1981.
All living donors go through extensive medical and psychological testing before being accepted as a donor.
To learn more about living organ donation at the University of Michigan, click here.
To learn more about Gift of Life Michigan and the deceased organ donor registry, click here.