Six-year-old Matthew Parker needed a new kidney. His elementary school teacher, Lindsey Painter, gave him one.
According to KSAT-12, a local ABC affiliate in New Braunfels, Texas, doctors tested more than 70 people to see if their kidney was a good match for the boy's body. Painter's kidney was the only one that fit the first grader's needs.
Parker, who has needed a kidney transplant since 2010, found one match five years ago, but his body rejected it. Doctors said only one percent of the population have a kidney that could match Parker’s body.
"We were shocked when it came back as a match,” Painter said to KSAT-12. “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.”
Painter, who began teaching Parker and his two brothers one year ago, said she hoped Parker would be as physically active as her own children.
"You love them like your own, you celebrate with them when things go well, and you’re upset (and) disappointed when things don’t,” Painter said of her students, according to KSAT.
Not all teachers can or would give a student a kidney, but they have helped children in many other ways. The American Psychological Association released a report that found students who have positive relationships with their teachers “attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflictual relationships.”
[For more of this story, written by Herb Scribner, go to http://national.deseretnews.co...r-students-life.html]
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