A beautiful two-year-old girl is to receive the incredible gift of life from a complete stranger, thanks to the internet.
When a woman came across a Facebook page created in support of toddler Arianna Moore, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder that affects the kidneys, she couldn’t get the little girl out of her mind.
Christy Harding, from Florida in the US, is mum to a two-year-old daughter herself, and Arianna’s plight was all too close to home.
While Christy may have been a complete stranger who lived more than 1,500 miles away, she knew she couldn’t just stand back and was desperate to do what she could to help save the little girl’s life
She reached out to the children's hospital in Minnesota where the toddler was being treated to see if there was anything she could do.
There was: Arianna Moore needed a kidney and, miraculously, Christy was a match!
That's why, on May 7th, the 37-year-old will travel to Minneapolis to donate one of her kidneys to Arianna.
"I have a 2-year-old daughter, and that's probably one of the biggest reasons," the big-hearted woman said. "When my husband and I were talking, we knew that if it were her, we would want everyone in the world to try and save her."
Though her kidneys failed when Arianna was about seven weeks old, none of the potential donors, including Arianna's blood relatives, were a match.
So Arianna's family turned to social media to share her plight.
Diagnosed with diffuse mesangial sclerosis shortly after birth, Arianna has undergone dialysis for about 10 hours a day, every day, for the past two years.
Now, nearly two years later, Christy has answered their call and offered up her own kidney for donation, and Arianna’s mum is overwhelmed by the kindness of the woman she’s never met before.
"Christy emailed me to let me know she was the one donating," Arianna's mum , Ashley Booth said. "I was in tears reading her email to me. It was pretty crazy. All I can do is cry every time I think about it."
