Lindsey Painter, a first-grade teacher in Texas, will be donating a kidney to one of her 6-year-old students.
After a nationwide search, Painter, a teacher at Hoffmann Lane Elementary in New Braunfels, Texas, said the hospital called her on Christmas Eve to tell her she was a match to donate a kidney to 6-year-old Matthew Parker.
"I have a 10-year-old and 6-year-old at home, both little boys,”
Painter told News 4 San Antonio. "And I just can't imagine having a child who is going through what Matt has gone through."
The boy goes to school part time and undergoes four-hour dialysis treatments.
Matthew’s kidneys began to fail when he was 3 weeks old,
according to a Web page set up by his family. He had a kidney transplant at age 2, but a couple years later, his body began to reject the organ.
More than 80 applicants sent information to the hospital to be considered as donors, but doctors warned Matthew’s family that the chance of finding a match was slim.
"The nurse at the hospital said we had to be realistic,"
Matthew's mother, Lisa Parker, told NBC News. "The term, 'needle in a haystack,' was used several times."
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GoFundMe page set up to help Painter cover expenses related to the coming surgery had raised more than $10,000 as of Monday afternoon.
“There’s no words that can say anything, because it’s more than ‘thank you.’ It’s deeper,”
Lisa Park said, according to Fox News.
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