Lyla Carreyn with her teacher and kidney donor Beth Battista. Photo / Twitter @uwhealthkids
Lyla Carreyn with her teacher and kidney donor Beth Battista. Photo / Twitter @uwhealthkids
A US teacher has saved a 5-year-old pupil's life bygiving the child a kidney, the BBC reports.
Beth Battista told the BBC she offered her kidney after hearing of Lyla Carreyn's difficulty in finding a suitable donor.
"I knew I just had to get tested rather than watch her suffer,"she said.
Both Battista and Lyla are recovering after the transplant operation last Thursday.
The teacher, who is also a mother-of-two, said that she heard about Lyla's condition after her mother Dena Carreyn shared a Facebook post about the girl's need for a kidney donor.
The BBC said Lyla was diagnosed a year ago with microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), a rare autoimmune disorder which requires 12 hours of dialysis a day.
Battista contacted the Living Donor programme in Wisconsin and, after two tests in July and August, was deemed to be a suitable donor for Lyla.
The BBC said it was a rare match because she needed to be the right blood group with few antibodies from previous bouts of sickness. She also needed to have matching antigens.
