Third Grade Teacher Donates Kidney To An 8-Year-Old Student Suffering Renal Failure


Natasha Fuller was born with kidney disease and now, at age 8, she is in end stage renal failure. To save her life, the little girl needs a transplant.

Luckily, third-grade-teacher Jodi Schmidt is a perfect match and decided, as a surprise to Natasha and her family, to donate her kidney.

“I’m so excited for her to have a happy life. Just be free and be the little one she is,” the teacher told KMOV.

Jodi teaches in the Oakfield Elementary School District where Natasha is a first grade student. During class, the girl often comes to visit and to get a hug from the teacher. Jodi described her as “sweet, and … very sick, but she’s always happy,” she told WISN.

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

Life isn’t easy for the child. Her kidneys are failing and she has to go to dialysis three times a week, a process she thinks is pretty boring, “because I have to sit in my room when I’m hooked up, and I don’t get to go play with my friends.”

There are many things she can’t do as she waits, and hopes, that she’ll be able to get a new kidney some day. Doctors have said that someone needs to donate one in order for the child to survive for much longer.

“I can’t jump. I can’t run. I can’t do hula-hoops, and I can’t do jump roping. Sometimes some people don’t have a match for you. And sometimes you try to look for a match but you can’t find one.”

That day has finally arrived, and quite unexpectedly. The teacher has decided to donate her kidney in a spark of inspiration after seeing the first-grader in ill health for a year.

“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,'” the teacher recalled. Her husband, Richard, recalled the moment as a bit shocking.

“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,'” he remembered.

Jodi said she often has “random thoughts” and didn’t think her husband took her idea to donate a kidney seriously at first, “but then we got everything started and he was very supportive.”

The generous teacher started the process in December to find out if she was a match and could donate a kidney to Natasha. School principal Becky Doyle told ABC News that the teacher just found out she was a match in two areas.

And she chose to break the news to her family by surprise at the school, and captured the emotional moment on video. The teacher invited Natasha’s grandmother, Chris Burelton, to the school last week to ostensibly give her a gift as a thank you for caring for her granddaughter. Instead, the teacher handed her a pink box with a message inside that announced she was a match to donate a kidney.

“You? Oh my gosh!” Burelton says in the video, before breaking down crying. “Here I thought she was coming to school because she was naughty!” Later, Burelton said that the teacher, her husband, and her family “are our family now forever.”

But for the teacher, the decision to give a kidney was an easy one. In the video, she told Natasha’s grandmother that she “figured I’m O-negative blood and it did just come to me. I think we’re all brought to a certain place and time for a reason.”

After everyone calmed down a bit, Natasha was brought in and given the same message — a card that read “it’s a match,” but she didn’t understand what it meant right away. Once she understood that the teacher was going to donate her kidney, she got more excited — especially at the prospect of getting a popsicle at the hospital.

Now, she’s looking forward to the surgery, which should take place in the next month. It’s on hold while the child battles an infection.

[Photo via Chris Burelton/Facebook]

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