A Colorado physical education teacher went far beyond her role as an instructor and became an organ donor for a very sick high school student.
Last week, Jen Sculley, a teacher at Denver's East High School, donated one of her kidneys to a student who is suffering from kidney disease.
“I am donating my left kidney to a student here at East High School,” Sculley told Denver's CBS4.
Sculley told the news station that the student, who has requested to be unidentified, happens to share the same name as one of her aunts -- an aunt Sculley lost to cancer. When she heard of the student's suffering, her need for the kidney and found out she was the perfect medical match, it all clicked.
"And as she was telling me, this very clear voice said, 'You’re going to give her a kidney,'" Sculley said. Watch CBS4's moving interview with Sculley above and read more about her inspirational donation here.
The transplant happened last week and Sculley is spending the rest of the month on medical leave.
Sculley is not the first teacher to donate a life-saving kidney to a student. Several other teachers across the country have made headlines recently for going beyond the classroom to help students and their families in need.
Last year in Ohio, 8-year-old first-grader Nicole Miller was in dire need of a kidney transplant and received a donated kidney from her former kindergarten teacher Wendy Killian, The Associated Press reported.
Another kindergarten teacher in Texas donated a kidney to a student's father who needed a transplant, according to NBC's Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. And in 2009, a teacher in New York donated a one of her kidneys to a 19-year-old writing student in need of a transplant who was on a waitlist that could have taken up to eight years to get to the top.
For more information about kidney disease and how to become a donor, visit the National Kidney Foundation's website.
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