An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper received a kidney from a fellow law enforcement in a touching, life-saving gesture of friendship.
Matt Greer, the Ohio State Highway Patrol's Bowling Green Post commander, left the University of Toledo Medical Center on Sunday as a crowd of well-wishers applauded, WTVG-TV reports. He was joined by Rossford Police Officer Michael Shaffer, who donated a kidney to the trooper.
Greer suffers from Alport syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes the gradual decline of kidney function, according to the Alport Syndrome Foundation. Less than 200,000 people have the disorder.
Greer went into kidney failure in November, and he risked needing dialysis if he didn't get an organ donation. Over a dozen Ohio first responders offered to see if they were a match with Greer.
“Doesn’t matter what uniform you wear, what your hat is, your badge. It doesn’t matter what you look like, we’re all here to do the same job, and that’s to help people and help each other," Greer told WGTV.
Shaffer was an almost-perfect match with Greer. In fact, the match was so close that the trooper said they were "brothers without being technically brothers, which is amazing."
“Police officers are always trying to save our lives, but it’s really cool that we had two police officers that got to save each other’s lives,” Dr. Michael Rees, a University of Toledo Medical Center transplant surgeon, told WGTV.
Shaffer put it simply as to why he agreed to undergo the four-hour surgery to donate a kidney.
“He’s my friend, I didn’t want to see him go, so I did what I wanted to do,” he told WGTV.
