Ten-year-old Vivica Loyd’s mom, Donette Warren, used Facebook to find a donor for her daughter who has been sick all her life. She was born with six holes in her heart, and has had five strokes and more than forty surgeries in her short lifetime, according to kare11.com.
Warren posted a message on Facebook asking anyone if they would donate a kidney to her daughter and asked all her friends to repost the message.
Eventually, the post was seen by Cathy Olsen on a friends’ wall. She was tested and determined a match.
She had the surgery done at the University of Minnesota in November. Olsen told kare11.com that she’s never had a surgery performed before, and while she wondered if she should save her kidneys in case her kids might need them someday, she knew families aren’t automatically considered matches and couldn’t ignore the girl in need.
“This is the best gift anyone can give,” Warren told Kare11. “It’s priceless. I can never tell Cathy thank you enough.”
The girl will be on medications while she has the new kidney, but she ended her dialysis treatments, which she’s been on for three years.
Vivica appears to have gotten help much faster through the social network than what other methods might have availed. Patients needing organ donations often get put on long waiting lists that can make the wait for a match seem like it never comes soon enough.
Will Facebook become a standard way to find organ donors more quickly than other methods?
Source: All Facebook
Monday, December 27, 2010