SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Moms around the world will receive flowers, breakfast in bed and other thoughtful gifts Sunday on Mother’s Day, but what a Utah man gave his mother ahead of the holiday goes far beyond the ordinary. Brandon Finlayson donated part of his liver to his mother in the first such transplant by a living donor performed in the state.

Gwen Finlayson, who has been living with autoimmune hepatitis for 27 years, has known for decades that she would need a transplant, according to news reports.

In relatively good health at 63 years old, Finlayson was far down on the liver transplant list. About 13,000 Americans are currently awaiting liver transplants, according to information from Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, where the transplant was performed in February.

The surgery isn’t simple, and it carries risks for both the donor and the recipient. Surgeons generally prefer not to do living-donor liver transplants, but with so many people on the transplant list, organ donations from deceased persons are in short supply.

“One of our leaders here at Intermountain told me, ‘We have a responsibility to help others help their loved ones,’ ” Dr. Manuel Rodriguez-Davolos, the medical director of the hospital’s live-donor transplant program and the doctor who performed the surgery, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “Even if it’s hard for us to operate on someone that’s healthy, we are helping them help their loved ones. It’s a concept of altruism that is incredible.”

When her son offered her a piece of his liver, Gwen initially rejected the idea as too great a sacrifice. Her “first reaction was anger, borne of fear for my son,” she told the Salt Lake newspaper

“I knew how big this surgery was; what he would go through,” she said. “I didn’t want that for him. He wasn’t sick. He didn’t need surgery. I did.”

Her 37-year-old son wasn’t surprised at all by the reaction.

“She just didn’t want to talk about it,” he told the Salt Lake newspaper. “She’s never wanted to talk about being sick. We all knew it was the right thing to do. …”

Brandon was persistent and, eventually, persuasive.

“How do you respond to that?” Gwen told KSTU of her son’s living liver donation. “This is my son. It was hard.”

The team at Intermountain Healthcare used 3D technology to create a plastic replica of Gwen’s liver so they could plan the surgery ahead of time.

This surgery was the first left-lobe, live-donor liver transplant in Utah. Some studies have shown that taking a portion of the left lobe is easier on donors because it represents only 40 percent of the liver, but they aren’t as common as right-lobe donations. Taking part of the right lobe is often seen as safer, due to the position of blood vessels.

With the successful transplant, more are expected at the hospital in the years to come, Rodriguez-Davolos said.

The part of Brandon’s liver that was taken for the surgery has already started to grow back and is now 80 percent of what it was pre-surgery. It will eventually completely grow back and may even be larger.

Brandon has returned to work and his mother is on a drug regimen to prevent rejection and autoimmune disease. Hepatitis-free for the first time in 27 years, she looks forward to traveling with her husband, Scott, spending time with their four children and 21 grandchildren, and doing volunteer work

“I look to the future with hope, instead of thinking, ‘How sick am I going to be then?’ ” she told the Salt Lake newspaper.

That’s all the thank-you Brandon needs.

“To see her with energy and to see her back doing the things she used to be able to do, it’s really exciting,” he told KSTU.

His gift still fills Gwen with wonder.

“It’s not lost on me that he would risk his life for me. Who does that? Who does that, you know?” she told KSTU. “To me, that’s the definition of a hero.”

“No, no,” her son told the news outlet. “I think I’m a son.”