By Genevieve Bookwalter for the Chicago Tribune
Hoping to find a kidney donor, Cubs fan Bridgett Kolls of Lombard went very public with her quest when she took a handmade poster to a baseball game last May.
Her sign was caught on camera, and by the end of the game, the 23-year-old’s phone was blowing up with messages. Strangers who saw the poster on television and the team’s social media accounts reached out to volunteer their kidney to Kolls, who was in need of a transplant after lupus ravaged her own.
Kolls currently undergoes dialysis three times a week to clean her blood, a job her kidneys can no longer do. A Chicago man, who previously was a complete stranger, ended up being a match.
“In November, one of the numbers that contacted me in May said, ‘Hey I have two more tests to do and then I can be your donor.’ I was like, what?”
He got the go-ahead in January. “I gave him a million thank you’s. He’s a very kind soul,” Kolls said.
The surgery was set for March 26 at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
But Kolls’ storybook ending has proved elusive.
“It all happened so fast,” Kolls recalls. “Everything was going fine in February, in March the transplant was set up.”