OAKFIELD -- Natasha Fuller needs a new kidney to survive. Thanks to her first grade teacher, she is finally off the wait list.
“It truly just came to me after I did a lot of thinking and praying,” Jodi Schmidt, a first-grade teacher at Oakfield Elementary School, told the Fond du Lac Reporter.
Natasha, 8, has been sick with prune belly syndrome -- a kidney disease -- since birth.
After Schmidt went through medical tests to confirm she was a match, she came up with an idea to break the news in a special way.
Schmidt called Natasha's grandmother into the school office, gave her a gift box, and under the tissue paper was a card with the words: ‘It’s a match."
WATCH THE EMOTIONAL MOMENT BELOW:
“I just lost it,” Chris Burleton told the Fond du Lac Reporter. “Jodi is an awesome woman, and I was just totally shocked. Speechless.”
Schmidt, who has three children of her own, said she has no doubt she was brought to Oakfield for a reason.
“I have had some really good days in my life, and that was probably one of the best days of my life,” Schmidt told the the Fond du Lac Reporter after watching Burleton's reaction.
The transplant surgery is planned soon.
