A Texas teacher is giving more than classroom instructions to a very special student in her first-grade class.
Lindsey Painter is donating one of her kidneys to 6-year-old Matthew Parker, which will allow the boy — who now attends Painter’s class twice a week — to go to school full time because me must now undergo dialysis three days a week.
Matthew's kidneys started failing when soon after he was born. A subsequent transplant from a deceased person failed, so his parents issued a plea for donors,
Fox News reports.
In response, Matthew's teacher at Hoffmann Lane Elementary School in New Braunfels, Texas, turned out to be among the 1 percent of the population who would be a viable match.
The surgery is scheduled for next month.
"When it came back that I was a match, it was shocking," Painter tells KVUE. "It did take a while to wrap my head around it, to think that I can do this, I can still live a normal life ... and I get to make this amazing difference in Matthew's life."
She adds, "For me to be the needle-in-the-haystack match that they were looking for, it is hard to deny that it was meant to be."
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