AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Last September, Laura Bolan noticed a flier posted at the suburban Atlanta elementary school that two of her children attend. The flier told about a little girl named Sarah Dickman, a student at the school, who needed a kidney transplant. Sarah's parents, Lori and Joe Dickman, had already placed their daughter on a national waiting list for transplant recipients, but posted the flier to give their daughter an extra chance at finding a suitable donor.
The flier listed Sarah's blood type, and Bolan knew she was the same type, so she called the number on the flier that evening. The Dickmans received another call from someone offering to donate a kidney, but tests revealed that Laura Bolan was the better match of the two.
Sarah had been born with juvenile nephronophthisis, a genetic disorder that slowly destroys the kidneys. Like most people with kidney disease, she was a dialysis patient, and the catheter required to connect her to the blood-filtering machine limited her ...