Rose Perry has the proverbial new lease on life. Thanks to a donated kidney, Perry received the proper treatment for a combination of kidney failure and type 2 diabetes that nearly took her life.

While most people in her situation would be overwhelmed with joy, Perry can’t help but bare the emotional scar that it took to save her life. In a bittersweet twist of fate, Perry’s miracle kidney donor ended up being her 24-year-old son, who passed away after a stroke this past month.

“I right away said no,” Perry told ABC News. “I don’t wish for my son’s body to be cut up. I don’t wish that. My husband and my son said: ‘We think you should let them do it.’ I cried my eyes out and said: ‘I don’t want his kidney and I want my child.’”

For the past year, Perry has undergone treatment for her failing kidneys, which has included dialysis three times a week. Her doctors at Palos Community Health in Illinois were getting ready to register Perry for the kidney transplant waiting list when she received the devastating news.

In early May, her son Ronald had collapsed at the family’s home and was taken into surgery at a local hospital where doctors put him into a medically induced coma. On May 16, Ronald Perry Jr. passed away at the age of 24 after suffering a severe stroke that caused bleeding around his brain.

Although Perry was reluctant to donate her son’s organs, even for her own benefit, her husband, Ronald Sr., and son, Christopher, knew it wasn’t only the right thing to do, but it’s what Ronald would’ve wanted. She agreed to a partial organ donation, but wouldn’t allow the donation of his heart. A day after Ronald’s untimely death, his mother was approved for transplant surgery using his kidney.

"As I was talking to one of the other physicians in the hospital, he said Ronald was a good son to the last in that he helped his mother, he gave her the gift of life," Dr. Deepak Mital, surgical director of Advocate Christ Medical Center’s Kidney Transplant Program, told the Chicago Tribune. "The transplant has now doubled her lifespan instantly."

According to Mital, people on the kidney transplant waiting list typically spend five years waiting for a suitable donor. That was five years Perry’s doctors felt she did not have. Although she refused to allow her son’s heart to be donated, Ronald’s other kidney and liver did find their way to recipients who needed them. She hopes that parents who hear her story will do the same in her situation.

“It does make a difference in people’s lives, and people that do get these organs are grateful they have them,” Perry added.