Prepare To Have Your Heart Warmed By This Hero Teacher Who Gave Her 6-Year-Old Student A Kidney

Prepare to have your heart warmed down to its cynical little cockles by your daily dose of happy, wonderful news, because a first-grade teacher in Texas has agreed to give a student one of her kidneys.

According to ABC, six-year-old Matthew Parker is a student at Hoffman Elementary School in Neu Braunfels, Texas, whose kidneys started failing when he was just three weeks old. He had a kidney transplant already, but his body rejected the donor kidney, and doctors said there was only a one-percent chance of finding another match. After a public call for donors, the hospital was stunned that it found one, and that the donor was Matthew’s teacher, Lindsey Painter. And not only was she a perfect match, she was actually willing to go through with it.

“When it came back that I was a match, it was shocking,” Painter said. “It did take a while to wrap my head around it, to think that I can do this, I can still live a normal life…and I get to make this amazing difference in Matthew’s life.”

Matthew is one of a set of triplets, and the principal says she put Matthew and his two brothers in Painter’s class because she was kind, caring, and generous, but nobody knew just how much. Giving up a kidney is a big deal, and Painter basically deserves the Teacher of the Year award every year for the rest of her life.

Matthew is only in Painter’s class twice a week, because the other three days he has to go to San Antonio for dialysis. But thanks to Painter’s amazing sacrifice, Matthew could lead a normal life and be in her class every day, just like any kid.

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