Thanksgiving is a time to rejoice and appreciate family, friends and delicious seasonal food assembled on the dinner table. But for some, the smell of pumpkin pie and turkey stuffing doesn’t stir up the usual warm festive feelings associated with this holiday. They only produce powerful, sharp stomachaches.

For five months, Kristin Goffinet, senior in LAS, opened her eyes every morning to an instantaneous surge of pain. Beginning last October, each day was a battle against her body and coming out victorious seemed like a distant goal. No matter what Goffinet attempted to eat, she simply could not keep it down. Her days were filled with persistent nausea, horrible upper abdominal pain and constant exhaustion from not eating  — all leading to a rapid weight loss of about 20 pounds.

“You get so hungry. You think, ‘Okay, maybe I’ll just have a cracker.’ But then it didn’t matter what it was, because you would still feel that pain,” she said. “It would last for hours. It’s debilitating.”

With no energy to get up in the morning to go to class, Goffinet began searching for the cause to her incapacitating pain. She became a frequent patient at McKinley Health Center, Provena Covenant Medical Center and the emergency room as doctors took blood samples and ran CT scans and MRIs.

“They ran every test in the books. They did everything they could think of,” Goffinet said. “But no one could give me a solid answer. And it wasn’t getting better    — it was only getting worse.”

It was only after a visit to the University of Chicago Medical Center in early December that Goffinet finally found herself in the right hands. The man who saved her life was Dr. Donald Liu, section chief of pediatric surgery and surgeon-in-chief at the University of Chicago Medicine’s Comer Children’s Hospital. He diagnosed her with having a condition called median arcuate ligament syndrome, or MALS.

MALS is a medical condition in which the median arcuate ligament compresses the celiac artery, causing pain and compromising blood flow that is vital for digestion. One of Liu’s specialties was diagnosing and performing surgery on patients with this disease.

Liu was “internationally recognized for his expertise in pediatric minimally invasive surgery, a type of surgery that is performed through small incisions, rather than large, open incisions,” according to the University of Chicago Medicine website. He was the first surgeon in the greater Chicago area to perform these procedures.

Though she was nervous for the surgery Liu scheduled, Goffinet was relieved to know that the symptoms were not all in her head, as many doctors she visited claimed.

“I needed something to happen one way or another. I just couldn’t live like that anymore,” she said.

Goffinet felt instantly better when she awoke from the surgery. Even with all of the surgical pain, she could feel the change that had occurred in her body.

“When she had several days in a row with no pain, it was like a miracle,” said Cindy Goffinet, Kristin’s mother. “I truly felt as happy that day as I did the day she was born  — it was like a new life was given (to) us.”

Now, months after the surgery, Kristin can live a happy, normal college life.

“I am very grateful to have her healthy again,” said David Myers, senior in AHS and Kristin’s boyfriend. “I am thankful that her and I can visit our families over break, see everyone and just enjoy time with our families.”

Though her life is completely different from how it was a year ago, Goffinet hasn’t forgotten about the hard times. The support of her friends, her boyfriend and her family — including her mother, brother and sister — helped her cope during those days when she couldn’t picture a life without pain. They consistently reminded her the doctors would find a cure, it wouldn’t be much longer and she would be able to live her life again.

And she will never forget the man that gave her life back to her.

While relaxing in southwest Michigan with his family this August, Liu saw two children drowning in Lake Michigan. He went out into the water to save them, and while the children made it safely back to shore, Liu never made it out.

“He was a terrific doctor, a sweet person, and super smart and skilled. We knew all that. But the more I have learned about him since his passing, it is even clearer how lucky we were,” Cindy Goffinet said.

Kristin is grateful that she met him when she did. Yet she feels sorrow for all of the children who were on the waiting list to see him and the patients just like her that fear they may never find the right diagnosis.

“I just couldn’t understand why he died. Why of all people?” Kristin Goffinet said. “I think I held onto that thought for a long time — that it just wasn’t fair. He was the least likely deserving of that fate.”

About two weeks after her surgery, Kristin had a checkup with Liu. With a big smile on her face, she seized the opportunity to shake his hand and say thank you.

This Thanksgiving, she will be thinking of all the loved ones around her, the abundance of food before her (which she no longer has to restrict herself from), and of course, Dr. Liu.

Alice can be reached at [email protected].