VIDEO: Teacher Donates Kidney to Save 5-Year-Old Student

Beth is a teacher for all the right reasons. She really cares about her students and she would literally do anything for them so that they can learn, be healthy and happy. So when one of her students, Lyla, who is just five years old was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that caused kidney failure, she had to act.
The teacher went, got tested and found out she was a perfect fit. She didn’t stop to ponder and think a lot about it because she knew it was the right thing to do. Both of them are currently recovering and doing well.

Read the full story below, provided by UW Health.

When preschool teacher Beth Battista learned that Lyla Carreyn, a 5-year-old student at the same school, needed a kidney transplant, she said “I just knew I had to get tested.”

Just a few months later, on Feb. 22, Beth’s kidney was transplanted into Lyla. According to their UW Health surgeons, Dr. Robert Redfield, who removed Beth’s kidney, and Dr. Luis Fernandez, who transplanted Lyla, both Beth and Lyla are resting and recovering well.

Beth’s donation story went viral on social media after Lyla’s mother, Dena Carreyn, shared a Facebook post about Lyla’s need for a living kidney donor. Lyla was diagnosed a year ago with microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), a rare autoimmune disorder, which meant Lyla needed to endure dialysis 12 hours each day. Beth saw the post, telephoned the UW Health Transplant Program, and her donor evaluation was initiated.

In October, Beth and Dena were invited to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where Beth received a thank you video and gift package from Aaron Rodgers, her favorite Green Bay Packers player. (Watch video) They also shared with Ellen the need for more living donors. Beth, who is a registered organ, tissue and eye donor and also on the bone marrow registry, is focused on the good news that living donation creates.

So quickly, in fact, that Beth had to swiftly talk with her children, ages 6 and 8, about her plan to donate a kidney, before they heard about it from anyone else.

“They asked, ‘Why you, mom?’ ” But, says Beth, “After I explained how sick Lyla was, and they met her and saw all of the machines and medications, they understood.”

Beth has been fielding questions about living donation, and “talks about it a lot,” she says. “My friends didn’t know much about organ donation, so this has been a great way to educate more people.”

“I always knew I was meant to be a wife and a mom and a teacher,” says Beth. “I wanted to give Lyla the future. A normal, happy, healthy future and I want anyone who has this same feeling to go in and get tested as a donor and give the gift of life.”

Beth’s parents set the example she’s tried to follow, of always being generous and giving back. In the 1990s, Beth’s uncle and godfather received a kidney, and Beth remembers how that changed his life. “Someone gave him 10 extra years, and I just wanted to give back,” says Beth. “It was my turn.”

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