Sometimes people lose focus on the people they care about the most, but not Ryan Goodwin.

A senior criminal justice major at Missouri Southern, this summer he took a risk that could have cost him his life.

On July 23, of this year Goodwin traveled to the University of Colorado in Denver, Colo. There he underwent surgery to remove the right lobe of his liver, donating it to his mother, Cynthia Goodwin.

“Of course I was terrified, this could have been life threatening,” Ryan said.

But when it came time to decide he did not waver.

“The doctors found it odd that my son didn’t hesitate to go through with the surgery,” Cynthia said.

She had been suffering from liver cancer since 2001. The Goodwins said they felt lucky that they were able to go through with the transplant. Ryan said two-thirds of people that try to donate organs do not make it through the extensive matching process.

“There was never a question of if I wanted to do this,” Ryan said. “This is my mom, there is nothing else to say.”

Although now she urges people to become organ donors, Ryan’s mother worried about taking a part of her son’s liver.

“I didn’t know if I could do this to my son,” Cynthia said. “As soon as I found out that our blood types were a match I started the long process. I had to take every blood test possible, and I lost 40 pounds for the surgery.”

The surgery went smoothly for both mother and son. Cynthia Goodwin saw immediate improvement.

“A few days after the surgery, my daughter looked at me and said, ‘Mom, your eyes aren’t yellow.'”

Both Ryan and his mother are out of the hospital and back to their normal lives.