Assembly line worker to give kidney to friend

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Assembly line worker to give kidney to friend

March 27, 2010

BY DIANE KRIEGER SPIVAK, (219) 648-3076

Sometimes, the answer to your prayers is right in front of you.

In Bradley Schneider's case, the answer was about 8 feet away at the Ford Motor Co. Assembly Plant in Chicago.

Schneider, 44, a Crown Point resident who puts windshield wipers on cars, needs a kidney.

Debra Green, 50, a Lynwood, Ill., resident who works next to Schneider putting covers on wheels, offered hers.

He said, "Are you serious?" Green said, "Yeah."

"People say things, but you don't take them seriously," said Schneider, a military veteran with an inherited disease that destroys the kidneys. Schneider is in stage five renal failure and has been on a transplant waiting list for a year and a half. He spends three days of his work week heading straight from the assembly line to four hours of dialysis.

"I leave at 4:30 in the morning and get home at 9:30 at night," Schneider said.

A couple of weeks after the co-workers' initial conversation, when the subject of a transplant came up again, Green told Schneider if his condition worsened she'd make good on her offer to become a donor.

Schneider gave Green a number to call to set up donor testing.

She did.

It turned out Green has the same blood type and was a perfect tissue match.

"They tested for everything as long as this building," Green said on her lunch break Friday. "The next step is to talk to a surgical physician and a psychologist," she said. "After that there's more paperwork and then they schedule surgery."

If all goes as planned, Schneider will be getting one of Green's healthy kidneys next month at the University of Chicago.

Neither Green nor Schneider misses the irony of the situation.

"I have five siblings and none of them were a match," Schneider said.

Although Green has worked at Ford for 10 years and Schneider for nine, the two never met until a couple of years ago, working on opposite ends of the plant.

"We just exchanged a few words now and then," Green said.

Then one day Schneider showed her the shunt in his wrist and mentioned he was going to need a transplant.

Green knew what she had to do.

"I think I'm here for a reason, to help as much as I can," Green said. She's been listed as an organ donor on her driver's license for eight years.

"But I never thought I'd be donating like this," she said.

"I just wanted to give back before I leave this world. You just never know what's going to happen. If it happens to me I hope God puts somebody there for me."

Green now hopes God puts someone there for her sister.

Green's sister's kidneys began to fail from diabetes in December, and she is on a waiting list for a kidney donor.

"Two years ago I told Brad I'd be there for him and then my sister needed a kidney. I just gave it to God," Green said. Tests revealed that Green could not be a donor to her sister, however.

"I just hope somebody comes through for my sister," she said.

Schneider knows he's lucky to have found a donor.

"If it wasn't for Debbie, I'd still be on the transplant waiting list," Schneider said. "I hear it's five years."

Not only is Schneider getting a kidney, but he and Green have already gotten something just as precious.

"We're friends now," Green said.

"Debbie's a very good person and very giving," Schneider said. "She's my union sister and now she's going to be my blood sister."

http://www.post-trib.com/news/2125098,new-cpkidney0327.article