There are almost 90,000 people waiting for organs in the United States. Often, patients can wait years to get an organ, if they get one at all.
That's leading more and more patients to take their search for an organ online.
Christine Jacobsen was one of them, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton.
Christine can't help but laugh and smile when she thinks about being a life-saving match with total stranger Lee Cole.
The single mom of two boys, Mike and George, Christine's tried to stay upbeat, despite spending most of her life suffering with lupus nephritis -- a complication of lupus that causes kidney disease.
"I lost my freedom," Christine says. "I had to go to dialysis three times a week, after work."
After waiting seven years on four different transplant lists, she finally got a call about a cadaver kidney. But that transplant failed.
"I was really depressed," Christine recalls, "because I felt like I'm never gonna get a kidney. I was on dialysis at that point for seven years."
Rather than wait the estimated five-to-ten years for a kidney match on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the government's national donor list, Christine took her quest for a kidney online, to MatchingDonors.com.
To read full story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/07/earlyshow/health/main20102520.shtml
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