VivaSync

On the morning of June 14, 2016, Ilysa Winick was in her New York City apartment putting the final touches on plans for her son Benjamin’s first-grade end-of-year party. She had just spent the weekend celebrating her 42nd birthday and woke up feeling achy and run down. Her husband of 15 years, Steve, suggested she stay home and take it easy.

But her symptoms only worsened. By 2 p.m. she was in excruciating pain and frantically called Steve.

“I felt like my hands and feet were on fire,” Ilysa tells PEOPLE. “I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t do anything.”

Just hours later, Ilysa was put into a medically induced coma at a nearby hospital as she battled a near-fatal blood infection that eventually led to the amputation of her feet and hands, and left her in desperate need of a new kidney. The frightening infection, which doctors still don’t know he she contracted, caused her body to go into septic shock, shutting down all of her vital organs.

As she fought for her life, she also received what she calls the “greatest and most unselfish gift you can give someone,” when a stranger became her kidney donor.

That stranger was PEOPLE photo director Catriona Ni Aolain, who was touched by Ilysa’s story when she heard about it at work. When she then learned that the mother of two needed a life-saving transplant, she decided to see if she was a match.

To read more about Ilysa and Catriona’s story, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

After discovering that she was, indeed, a perfect match, she knew it was meant to be. And the night before their scheduled surgery, which took place on August 9, the two met in person for the first time.

“It was so special, honest and organic. We just had this connection. I would have been grateful for anyone’s kidney, but I’m so glad it was hers,” says Ilysa. “Despite everything I lost, somebody thought my life was worth saving.”

Fighting for Her Life

In the beginning of Ilysa’s three-month stay at Columbia Presbyterian hospital, her husband didn’t know if she would survive.

“I thought she might never make it out there,” says Steve, 44, who founded a private preschool with his wife in 2010. “There are no words to describe that feeling when someone you love is all of a sudden taken.”

During the 14 months before her transplant, Ilysa was dependent on dialysis, a five-day-a-week grueling process that caused extreme fatigue, debilitating headaches and constant nausea and vomiting. It also held her back from being there for Steve and her two children, Benjamin, 8, and Ryan, 5.

Knowing that her only chance for longterm survival was getting a new kidney, Ilysa emailed a plea to her closest friends to help spread the word to help her find a “happy donor to whom I will owe my life.”

Watch the full episode of Ilysa Winick: A Stranger Saved My Life, streaming now on PeopleTV. Go to People.com/peopletv, or download the app on your favorite streaming device.

She found a match, but two weeks before the planned surgery, her first donor backed out. But just hours later, she found out Catriona was also a match.

“It was hard to process,” says Ilysa. “I couldn’t even believe it.”

After the successful surgery, Ilysa gained not only independence but a new friend.

“I didn’t go into this looking for a friend,” says Catriona, 45. “That’s a bonus that I never could have imagined. Our kids call each other cousins. It’s really cute.”

Two months after the successful transplant surgery, Ilysa is back at work at Reade Street Prep, going to CrossFit, enjoying dinners with friends and, most importantly, showing the world that despite the challenges she has faced, she’s the same person she always was.

With the help of state-of-the-art prosthetics, she has relearned how to eat, walk and “navigate the world in a completely different way,” says says.

“I’m a lot more than what happened to me. This is a challenge like I’ve never been given,” she says. “Something unimaginable and tragic happened, but we’ll get through this. We’ve already come so far.”

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