A Wisconsin Teacher Donates A Kidney To A Sick Student, Eight-Year-Old Gets The Gift Of Life From Her Good Friend

A Wisconsin elementary school teacher is donating one of her kidneys to an 8-year-old first-grade student, KMOV (Saint Louis) is reporting.

Eight-year-old Natasha Fuller doesn’t get to go to school as often as she would like. While other kids her age are in school, Natasha is in dialysis three days per week. And when she’s not in dialysis, she’s usually too weakened from sickness to do many of the things kids her age get to do.

“I can’t jump. I can’t run. I can’t do hula-hoops, and I can’t do jump roping.”

However, on the rare occasions when she does make it to Oakfield Elementary School, she makes it a point to stop by the third-grade classroom of teacher Jodi Schmidt.

“Every single day when I have school, I pass and I go inside of her room and give her a hug.”

As it turns out, though, Schmidt and Fuller’s friendship extends beyond that of just teacher and student. Schmidt is donating one of her kidneys to her student.

Jodi announced her decision to Natasha’s family by bringing them her decision in the form of a boxed and wrapped present.

“This WONDERFUL lady named Jodi Schmidt is a teacher at Natashas school…and she gave the best ever present to Tasha.Jodi is a match for Tasha to get a kidney………so very very thankful to Jodi and her family….Tasha will get a NEW kidney from this wonderful lady……GOD BLESS!!!!!”

Jodi says her decision to donate her kidney was made on the spur of the moment.

“I really don’t know. I knew she was sick for well over a year, and I didn’t until that day. It really truly just came to me like, ‘I’m going to give her a kidney.'”

Jodi’s husband, Richard Schmidt, says he was similarly caught off-guard when his wife told him that she was donating a kidney.

“I was probably getting supper ready for the kids or something and she called and said ‘Hey, I think I want to donate a kidney.’ And I’m like ‘OK, let’s back it up a little bit.'”

According to the National Kidney Foundation, over 100,000 people worldwide are currently waiting for kidney transplants. Close family members — parents and children, siblings — are the best donors, but a donor doesn’t necessarily have to be a close relative.

In fact, according to Dr. Karl Womer, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, more and more often, people in need of kidney donations are finding donors in friends or even strangers.

“The most common reason for donation is due to emotional ties, such as between spouses and other family members. However, increasingly we are finding donors who are interested in donating in a non-directed fashion. In these donations, they donate to people they do not personally know. The motivations of these individuals is best summed up by one of my previous donors who said that his life would not be complete if he died with two kidneys and was not able to donate one to someone to help them out.”

Still, some are reluctant to donate a kidney out of uncertainties about the process. Dr. Womer assures that you don’t have to be a perfect match to donate a kidney to someone. While perfect matches are preferable, an imperfect match is preferable to dialysis.

Similarly, some would-be donors are concerned about the cost, when in fact, when you donate a kidney, or any organ for that matter, the transplant recipient’s health insurance covers 100 percent of the cost of the donor.

For Natasha Fuller, her life-changing kidney donation won’t be happening right away — doctors are waiting until an infection clears up before she can safely undergo surgery. But when that phone call comes, probably within around a month or so, both the little girl and the brave teacher who is donating a kidney to her will be ready to go.

[Image via Shutterstock/Stacey Newman]