A Kidney Plea Brings Two Strangers Together

Most people when they find out they need an organ; a kidney, a liver, a heart, they go on a waiting list, and they wait.  Not Christine Royles, she decided to advertise, sort of, with a message on her car.

When Josh and Ashley Dall-Leighton saw the message, Ashley said to her husband,  "Oh, my God, that's the saddest thing I've ever read".  His reply, "Did you get the number? Text her right now."

23 year old Christine Royles, the woman behind the sign, is from South Portland, Maine. She was diagnosed with kidney disease in December 2013, soon after that she went on dialysis.

Christine soon found herself on the list of over 100,000 people in the United States who need kidney transplants.  She did not know if she could wait that long. but she had an idea. "I saw a story about this old man in a different state who was asking for a kidney for his wife," Christine told the Portland Press Herald. "He stood on the side of the road with a sign." She decided to try the same thing, but with her car.

Christine said she started crying when Josh Leighton texted her. "I'm shocked that someone is going to do this for me," she told the local paper. "The fact that someone with a young family is going to take time off work to help some random person is unbelievable to me."

Final testing on Josh's compatibility should be done in a few months, and the transplant surgery is currently scheduled for mid-May. Josh will be out of work, on unpaid leave, for about a month. Christine started a Go Fund Me account to cover his family's losses during that time, it has raised over $42,000 in 12 days.

Surprisingly the Go Fund Me account for Christine's transplant drugs and aftercare has raised just $4300 in 8 months.

Maybe Josh will give Christine some of the money, he's already giving her a body part!