The week between Christmas and New Year's — a time that's supposed to be filled with all manner of cheerful things like fancy dresses, ski trips and hot chocolate — is when Christine Buell is scheduled to be lying in a hospital bed in San Francisco while doctors carefully remove her kidney. The surgery is 100 percent voluntary.
Buell, a 45-year-old vice principal at the Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School and a mother of two young girls, is donating the organ to a former student, Kelvin Sanders, who was diagnosed with end-stage renal disease last fall at the age of 19. After they remove the kidney from Buell on Dec. 29, the surgeons will wrap it up, put it on ice and rush it over to another surgery room, where they will sew it inside Kelvin's body.
Buell had heard about Kelvin's situation by happenstance eight months ago while browsing her Facebook feed on an otherwise ordinary day.
As a teacher for more than 20 years, Buell was Facebook friends with a lot of her former students — some 500 to 600 of them — and enjoyed keeping up with them through social media. Sandwiched between the messages about new jobs, fabulous vacations, grinning babies and other life news was a more sobering update from one of Kelvin's friends. The note explained that Kelvin had suddenly become sick and his family was looking for a kidney donor.
At a school with more than 1,350 students, it's hard to remember everyone who walks the halls, but Buell prided herself on trying to do so. Kelvin had graduated in 2013 and was a good student, well-liked by students and faculty alike, and played wide receiver on the football team for all four years. He had excellent manners, she recalled, and was the type of kid who always made it a point to stop and say a "Good morning/good afternoon, Ms. Buell."
She thought about her own health. While she didn't consider herself particularly fit, she did try to adhere to a California lifestyle by eating well and attending yoga classes. She did not have any diseases, at least none she knew about. Almost instinctively, Buell clicked on the button to sign up to see if she was a match. And after several months of testing, it turned out she was.
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