A Starbucks barista has donated a kidney to a longtime customer with whom she forged a caffeine-fueled friendship, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
Annamarie Ausnes, 55, who works at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., had exchanged small talk with Starbucks barista Sandie Anderson for three years, but she didn't mention her kidneys — which had been failing for 20 years — until one day last fall, the paper said.
She told Andersen, 51, that she needed a transplant but her husband and son weren't matches. Andersen didn't hesitate to have a blood test to see if she matched her customer, the Post-Intelligencer reported. She was.
This week, Andersen donated a kidney to Ausnes at Virginia Mason Medical Center in a procedure that gave Ausnes three kidneys, the paper said.
Surgeons said her old kidneys "didn't interfere" with the transplant and she had room for the new one to fit, according to the report.
Both women face a few days in the hospital, and weeks of recovery, but are expected to be fine, surgeons said.
Click here to read more on this story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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