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Sep 17, 2009 11:35 pm US/Central
Mpls. Man Finds Kidney On Facebook
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ―
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"Yea, you're gonna need a kidney transplant, there's no way around it. The game's over," Chris recalled the doctor telling him.
CBS
Three times a week and three hours a day, 44-year-old Chris Strouth is confined to a recliner. However, it's anything but R & R in his living room. Intravenous tubes run from his left arm and into a machine. Dialysis has been doing the work of his kidneys for the past six months.
He has been in that state ever since a renal specialist at the Mayo Clinic delivered the devastating news.
"Yea, you're gonna need a kidney transplant, there's no way around it. The game's over," Chris recalled the doctor telling him.
With those blunt words, Chris had no more stepped out into the hospital parking lot when he grabbed his phone. With a few taps of his fingers he typed out a message to all his friends. He first "tweeted" to his Twitter followers and then later posted a message on his Facebook page.
"I immediately typed into the phone, expletive deleted - I need a kidney," Chris explained.
One of those friends works on the campus of the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul.
"I first found out when I read his Twitter feeds," says Institutional Researcher for the college, Scott Pakudaitis.
Scott says he is a "distant" acquaintance, and remembers Chris from the Twin Cities music scene back when Scott was part of a band. He continues to follow Strouth on Twitter and Facebook today because Chris is an accomplished music producer.
The unusual postings, appealing for a kidney, caught Scott's eye.
"That's right! Network anyway you can. It beats making a bunch of phone calls asking people to give him their kidney," Scott said.
Pakudaitis wasn't alone in responding to the appeal. Eighteen others told Chris they would be tested to see if their tissue would match. Only one of them passed all the tests.
In April, Scott learned the news that he would make a perfect match.
"I got a direct message from him on Twitter saying, 'hey -- I'm a match,'" said Chris.
In just a few months, these two, "cyberspace" friends will reconnect in adjoining surgical rooms.
When asked why he would give something so precious to someone he knows only casually, Scott responded, "He needs a kidney and I turned out to be a perfect match so I thought I'd do this."
It is a selfless gift of life that will free Chris of the tubes of dialysis and give both of the men a closer connection to what matters most in life.
"I can't refer to Scott without calling him the nicest man in the universe," said Chris. "Because he is the nicest man in the universe!"
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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