First reported by All Facebook, Donette Warren from Andover, Minnesota used Facebook to find a kidney donor for her 10-year-old sick daughter. The little girl, named Vivica Loyd, was born with six holes in her heart and has had five strokes and over forty surgeries, according to kare11.com.
Warren first posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone could donate a kidney to her daughter and then asked all her friends to repost the message. “I was posting on Facebook all day,” Warren said. “I was posting the message to help my daughter and to please repost.”
A stranger by six degrees named Cathy Olsen saw the message on a friend’s wall and volunteered. Olsen, a mother of 3 had never had surgery before, but she felt obliged to help. Fortunately, Olsen was detirmined a match for Loyd.
“I couldn’t sit around and watch a girl die, that I knew I was a match for,” Olsen said. “I don’t feel like a hero, but it feels great.”
Olsen donated her kidney at the University of Minnesota on November 17th, 2010. “This is the best gift anyone can give,” Warren told Kare11. “It’s priceless. I can never tell Cathy thank you enough.”
Patients in need of organ donations are often put on wait lists for years as low-budget and often poorly run organizations mill through paperwork and account files. Vivica’s success story would not have been possible without the ease of outreach provided by social networks like Facbeook. “I hope she’s having the best Christmas ever, it sounds like she is,” Olsen said.
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