Friendship forged at Longwood leads to life-saving living donor gift

"The music community at Longwood was-and still is-an incredibly tight-knit group," said Amy Buchanan, a liberal studies major who played the trumpet in the Wind Symphony and Jazz Band and was a member of Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity with Lusk. "Many of us remain connected even after two decades of friendship.

The wait for a new liver

Ryan Buchanan was diagnosed in high school with ulcerative colitis, which led to a weakening of his liver and a later diagnosis of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), a rare liver disease that causes inflammation and scarring of the bile ducts. In early 2024, his liver began to fail and he was placed on the national transplant waiting list that summer.

While waiting for a liver from a deceased donor, the Buchanans decided to also pursue the search for a living donor. Amy Buchanan made a flyer and leveraged the power of social media and their network of friends to ask for potential donors. The response was so overwhelming that after a few weeks the donation coordinator asked that she take down her social media post.

For most of 2024, while waiting for the donor process to play out, the family had to basically put everything on pause. Meanwhile, Ryan, a Virginia State Police trooper, kept getting sicker.

The donor evaluation process starts with a donor health questionnaire and initial bloodwork. Two people moved past that round and on to the full evaluation, which takes several weeks. However, it was determined that both of those potential donors were not a good match.

"It was hard not to feel defeated when we had just carried so much hope," said Amy Buchanan. "Each week we waited, I watched my husband grow more tired and more jaundiced, and our kids could see it too. The weight was heavy, and we were exhausted."

The donor evaluation process started again, and the next person on the list happened to be Lusk-the Buchanans' college friend who had offered to be a donor months earlier. On Nov. 7, 2024, Ryan Buchanan got the call that Lusk was an exceptional match.

This allowed us to shift from searching for a liver to preparing for a new liver," Amy Buchanan recalled. "We were all filled with a new sense of hope."

Rolls Royce of livers

On January 21, 2025, Ryan Buchanan and Lusk underwent liver transplant surgery at VCU Health's Hume-Lee Transplant Center, which is nationally known for providing state-of-the-art care to patients needing organ transplants.

Both Lusk and Buchanan had a transplant team, which included two surgeons for each of them. During a living-donor transplant, a portion of the healthy person's liver is removed and transplanted into the recipient to replace their unhealthy liver. Both the donor and the recipient's liver will regrow over the next few months.

"The surgeon was really wonderful," Lusk said. "He came in and asked, 'Do you want me to take a picture when I take your liver out and text it to you?' And I said, 'Absolutely I do. I would like to see my liver.'"

The surgeon made good on his promise and sent the photos to Lusk, who said she was surprised to see how big her liver was. But that wasn't the only remarkable thing. Her liver had extra ports, which made it better for living donation. It also meant that during surgery they took more of Lusk's liver than initially expected-roughly two-thirds.

"The surgeon came in after the surgery and said I had the Rolls Royce of livers," she recalled. "And the pictures were really cool."

Lusk's surgery lasted about eight and a half hours, while Buchanan's procedure took about 12 hours. Both spent time in the ICU following the operations. Lusk was moved to a recovery suite first, while Buchanan remained in intensive care longer. Once he was moved to the same floor, the two were able to see each other-a long-awaited reunion after a day that had changed both of their lives.

"I have no doubt that their ability to visit each other during recovery made them heal more quickly," said Amy Buchanan.

"I remember feeling a whole lot better," Ryan Buchanan said. "It was pretty much instantaneous. I felt so much better than what I'd felt like before the surgery. Once I got mobile I could head down to the hall every other day or so to visit Katherine."

After the surgery Lusk received some handmade gifts from the Buchanans' children, including a card that read "Thank you for saving my Daddy." Amy Buchanan's post-surgery gift to her husband and Lusk was a playful, heartfelt keepsake: plush yellow livers hand embroidered by her mom with the date and "Ryan and Katherine's liverversary." When they celebrated the one-year anniversary of the transplant with dinner at a restaurant in Richmond in January, they posed for a photo proudly holding their memento.

Recovery and beyond

The Buchanans live in the Richmond area, while Lusk lives in Farmville. Amy Buchanan noted they are fortunate to live close to a top transplant center.

"A lot of people have to travel far to get transplants, so I'm very thankful that we didn't have to," she said.

Ryan Buchanan spent almost three weeks in the hospital and then continued his recuperation at home. It would be six months before he returned to his job with the Virginia State Police, where he works in the safety division.

Lusk, a band director with Appomattox County Public Schools, was out of the classroom for 12 weeks as she recovered. She said her time away from work and the transition after returning would have been far more difficult without the steady support of fellow Longwood alum and teaching partner Bryan Allgood '10, who helped ensure her students and the band program never missed a beat.

Lusk's recovery took longer than anticipated because they took more of her liver than planned. Almost a year after the surgery, she was still working to get her full abdominal strength back.

It takes only a few months for a liver to regenerate. Lusk was told that three months post-surgery her liver would be about 90 percent regrown. Her liver is now fully back at 100 percent.

Lusk said the transplant experience reshaped the way she sees both herself and the world around her, giving her a renewed sense of gratitude and self-compassion.

"The whole situation has made me gentler with myself-and with other people, too," she said.

Lancers for life

Both Lusk and Ryan Buchanan said the outpouring of support from their Longwood friends and the broader university community became an essential part of the transplant and recovery process.

"You don't realize how big a group of friends you have until you go through something like this," Ryan Buchanan said.

"People came out of the woodwork," Amy Buchanan added. "Because our relationship started at Longwood-and our friendship with Katherine started at Longwood-there were so many people who cared about all three of us. It meant so much that people reached out and helped in any way they could. I'm grateful we chose a smaller school that felt like family, because in the end, that sense of family made all the difference."

Lusk said she, too, heard from numerous Longwood connections after the transplant, including music department professors she still keeps in touch with-reminders that the bonds formed years ago remain strong.

The Buchanans recalled how, when their children were born, "Aunt Katherine" would arrive with gifts in hand. But enduring the transplant process together deepened that bond in a profound way.

"In college, you make friends who become like family," Amy Buchanan said. "This just cemented her place in ours because we're connected in a whole new way."

"She's part of me," Ryan Buchanan said, pausing before delivering the punchline. "Literally."