Two Hilliard teachers to undergo surgery after discovering kidney match
HILLIARD, Ohio (WCMH) -- The lives of two Hilliard City School teachers will forever be changed this Friday.
Scott Allen and Amy Case, who met more than 10 years ago while teaching at Hilliard Bradley High School, are poised to go under the knife as part of a procedure that will save one of their lives.
Allen, a math teacher for Hilliard City Schools Online Academy, has been battling IgA Nephropathy for the past several years. It's a kidney disease that could result in kidney failure, he said.
"Continually gotten worse to the point where I used to coach and things like that, but I didn’t have the energy for that," he said. "Even teaching was starting to get hard, just being on my feet."
The district is also where he met his living kidney donor: Case. A special education coordinator at Hilliard City Schools, Case is not only Allen's colleague, but she is also his neighbor and close friend.
“We work together, and we know each other, and we have kids about the same age, they go to the same school and we’re just so connected , that part is really neat,” Allen said.
Case, who knew Allen was looking for a kidney donor, decided to get tested to see if she was a match after she saw an image of Allen facetiming his young daughter while receiving kidney dialysis treatment.
It's a treatment he said he's faced for the last year -- a four-hour process he undergoes three days a week.
“I had a feeling that I was just the match," Case said. "It was a weird feeling that you get just a very surreal gut feeling."
Allen added, “The whole way through she kind of said 'I have a feeling that I’m the one — I know in my heart that it’s going to be me.' And that was really special to hear that. It just gave me so much hope and you know sometimes you can have some periods where you don’t have a lot of that.”
Case said she knows what it feels like to have a loved one facing serious illness, and that's part of the reason she wants to give to her friend.
“I’m going to feel discomfort, I’m going to have to have that recovery time, but in the grand scheme, it’s such a tiny blip on the map and for him it’s regaining his whole life, so to him it means everything,” she said.
Allen hopes to get back into the classroom after the surgery. He said Case's donation means the world to him and his family.
“I mean, she’s a hero, like she’s saving my life. Without her I don’t know what I would be doing, you know, or how I would be feeling the next however many years, but she’s literally giving me my life back," he said.
The surgeries for both Allen and Case are scheduled for Friday, and in the meantime, the duo will undergo a few more tests before the big day.