Sunday marks a very special anniversary for a woman and her family in Greenwood.
Thirty years ago to the day, 60-year-old Susie Bacon received a new heart and lungs in a transplant. Each year she celebrates another year of a second chance.
"It's like, I'm going to count every birthday I can," Bacon said.
Bacon has now spent half of her life with another woman's heart and lungs, after a condition called primary pulmonary hypertension nearly took her life when she was 30 years old.
"Which is too much pressure in the lungs, which caused my heart to double in size. So by the time I had my transplant, they said I wouldn't have lived until Christmas," Bacon said.
In 1986, Susie was referred to The Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore because so few hospitals could perform the risky procedure at the time.
She remembers the call saying they had a match.
"My doctor said, 'It's a good day isn't it?' And I said yes. And he said 'I need you out here... Just bring a toothbrush that's all you need,'" Bacon said.
At the time doctors told her she was only the 50th person in the world to have both lungs and her heart replaced.
It all happened overnight in a single procedure.
Now, three decades later she goes in every 6 months for a checkup with her doctor at Methodist Hospital. The staff is still amazed.
"The doctor walks in and he goes, 'So what's your secret?'" Bacon said. "I said, 'It must be this good old clean Indiana living,' because they have no idea why I'm doing so well."
Bacon has not had the chance to meet or speak with her donor family, though she does know her heart and lungs came from a woman who was only a few years younger than her at the time.
She did write the family a letter a few years after the transplant to say thank you.
"I finally decided that, it's time. I've survived this long, so when they gave me a fifty-fifty shot of getting off the table, it's like, this is pretty nice," Bacon said.
Bacon still takes several medications each day but says it is a small price to pay for her health. She also uses her life and story to talk about the power of signing up for organ donation.
"I've changed a lot of people's lives because some of my family were like, 'Oh no, I was sent to this earth with these parts, and I'm going to take them with me.' But as they see me going from year to year to year, it's like, they've all checked the boxes now," Bacon said.