Paying it forward one kidney at a time - 13abc.com Toledo (OH) News, Weather and Sports

This is a truly amazing story of "paying it forward," and it started right here in Toledo. A local doctor heads the "Alliance for Paired Donation," which is basically a chain of kidney transplants. And now the alliance has now gone international!

Michalis Chelmis had kidney disease. His only chance for long term survival was a transplant, but in his homeland of Greece that wasn't easy.

That's where the Toledo-based Alliance for Paired Donation comes in. Michalis came to the University of Toledo Medical Center last December to receive a kidney from a woman he never met in Oklahoma.

"I am feeling fantastic," he says. "I have a new kidney and a new life!"

In order to get that new kidney, his wife Dora promised to come back and donate one of her kidney's to someone else in need.

She's doing that in Toledo on Thursday morning, donating a kidney to a person in Pennsylvania.

"All my thoughts are with that person," she says. "My heart and my spirit hope that he will get my kidney and start a new life, and I know how that is, because I have lived it through my husband."    

Dr. Michael Rees is a transplant surgeon at the UTMC, and he heads the Alliance for Paired Donation.

"When we first started, there were a lot of naysayers," he says. "It is very gratifying to see it working."

More than 90,000 Americans are on a waiting list for a new kidney. Twelve people die every day in the United States while on that list.

In a short time, the Alliance for Paired Donation has already helped save more than 100 lives

"We did the first kidney transplants in 2007, and we have now done 125 transplants," Dr. Rees says.

But Michalis and Dora are a first for the program.

"For the first time, people have crossed continents to get a kidney transplant," Dr. Rees says. "We have an American who gave a foreign person a kidney, and we have a foreign person who is giving back to an American, and it's very exciting for us."

Dr. Rees says the transplant surgery will take two to four hours. After surgery, Dora's kidney will be flown to Pennsylvania where it will be transplanted.

Ninety percent of donors are out of the hospital just two days after surgery

We will have a crew with Dora during surgery, and we'll bring you the story Thursday night.

For more information about the Alliance for Paired Donation, visit paireddonation.org.