Good Day Atlanta Showcase
ATLANTA - Sometimes everything seems to align perfectly. In Gabrielle Culberson's case, it was like a miracle. The Georgia high school student was in desperate need of a kidney transplant, and the chances of finding a donor were looking slim, until her former soccer coach stepped in.
What we know: Culberson isn't one to let anything stand in her way. The rising high school senior has been juggling soccer, lacrosse, and straight A's while managing kidney disease for most of her life. She was diagnosed with Berger's Disease at 6 years old.
"It basically means that my kidneys don't filter the proteins they're supposed to, so it ends up building up in my body," Culberson explained.
For years it meant extra medication and monitoring, until Gabrielle's freshman year.
"I was in New Orleans to see a concert, and I got a call saying I had to come back to get a kidney biopsy. And after that trip they decided that I was going to need a kidney transplant," she said.
Her mom, Rayan, says it was a challenging time for this soccer star who had constantly been on the move.
"She got sicker and sicker, and once they put in the dialysis catheter, when all was said and done she was doing seven days a week, 10 hours a night in the bed on dialysis. So it limited her relationships with friends, her going out," Rayan Culberson said.
They put out a call for help, launching a campaign they call One Kid, One Kidney. What they didn't know was that someone from their past was on his own mission to help someone in need.
Dig deeper: "I had actually decided to be an anonymous donor - so just somebody who would donate for the sake of donation. Had no idea who the recipient may or may not be, and I was just very thankful to be a donor," Dan Armstead said.
Armstead was one of Gabrielle's childhood soccer coaches. She played on the same team as one of his daughters, and the families had kept in touch over the years. Dan didn't know Gabrielle was dealing with kidney disease until he saw a post on social media.
"It took me four months to be approved to be a donor, and two days to find a match. As a matter of fact, I saw the Facebook post Rayan had put out there 15 minutes after it had been posted," he said.
Just two days before, Armstead was told he'd be a good donor for a stranger. When he saw the post, he called Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and learned he was the perfect match for one of his former players.
"We both have the same number of blood vessels going in and out of the kidney, both had the same size vessels, so no stents or whatnot needed to be put in. I'm considerably larger than Gabrielle, but my kidney was able to fit in her little body," Armstead said.
What's next: It's now been one year since the transplant, and it's changed Gabrielle's life and given her a new sense of freedom.
"We've been traveling a lot and before that, I wasn't able to travel without taking my dialysis machine with me," Gabrielle said.
She's spending the summer before her senior year studying at programs through Brown and Harvard with an emphasis on Environmental Sciences.
And on top of her studies, she's using the platform she launched to find her match, One Kid One Kidney, to help others who are in her shoes.
"When we launched her campaign, we started One Kid One Kidney to kind of look for a donor, and we have since. She flipped One Kid One Kidney to a nonprofit that we are working on. We just mentored our first family to get their kidney." her mother said.
Each step of the way, it was as if they were in the right place at the right time, and now they're each still trying to be in the right place to help others through their hard times.
"Make sure that if you go through something like this, that you use your platform for the next person in line, because you never know who is out there who needs you," Culberson said.
The families still keep in touch, and joke now that they are family too, since Gabrielle is 8% Armstead. Armstead says his brother has been inspired to be a living donor and has signed up to donate a kidney as well.
