They were co-workers, nurses who knew each other only well enough to chat a little during slow times in Saint Vincent Health Center's emergency department.

Sheri McConaghay and Colleen Acri didn't become close friends until McConaghay gave Acri's husband, Marty, one of her kidneys.

"We were in the nurses' station, and I was talking about the home dialysis training I was taking to help Marty," Colleen Acri said. "Sheri asked me what I needed. I joked, 'A kidney.' She said, 'I have one.'"

McConaghay said she had no idea that she would donate her kidney until she said it.

"I don't know what possessed me to say it," McConaghay said. "But as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew things would work out."

Kidneys are unique in that they can be taken from a living donor. Most of us are born with two of them, even though we only need one kidney to live a healthy life.

But that doesn't mean there are lots of people out there willing to give one of their kidneys to an acquaintance or stranger.

Most living kidney donors are related to the recipient or are paired with them in a multiperson kidney exchange, said Edward Clark, M.D., the Saint Vincent nephrologist who treats Marty Acri.

"This was very unusual," Clark said. "I thought all along that McConaghay was a good friend of the Acris."

Marty Acri's kidneys have troubled him most of his life.

The 50-year-old Millcreek Township man was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 13. A few months later, he damaged his left kidney in a bicycle accident.

His condition slowly worsened until Clark told him in the summer of 2011 that he needed dialysis because his kidneys were no longer adequately filtering his blood.

"And I was going to need a transplant," Marty Acri said.

His sister was tested as a possible donor, but she wasn't a good match.

Meanwhile, McConaghay hadn't forgotten her offer. She kept bugging Colleen Acri, asking her for her husband's blood type.

"She was asking me every day," Colleen Acri said. "I found out Marty's blood type was B-positive. She said she was B-positive."

McConaghay took it upon herself in October to schedule tests at the Cleveland Clinic to see if she was a possible donor for Marty Acri.

She found out she was a three out of six antigen match with him.

"That's a good match," Clark said. "Three out of six is what you get when you test a parent."

So McConaghay underwent more tests to see if she was healthy enough to donate a kidney. The 53-year-old even underwent a psychological exam and a pregnancy test.

"I found out I wasn't pregnant, thank God," McConaghay said with a laugh.

The transplant was scheduled for May 14. The Acris spent the night at a Cleveland motel with McConaghay and her husband, Jim.

Donations from Saint Vincent ER employees paid for the motel and travel costs.

Early the next morning, the couples walked to the Cleveland Clinic for the surgeries.

McConaghay went into the operating room first. Orderlies wheeled her past the Acris' pre-op room.

"There were tears running down her face, so I jumped up and asked if she was OK," Colleen Acri said. "You want everything to be all right because she was going out of her way to do this."

It took surgeons longer than expected to remove McConaghay's kidney because it had two renal arteries instead of the usual one.

Then it was time to begin Acri's surgery. After he was wheeled away, Colleen Acri and Jim McConaghay spent the rest of the day in the waiting room.

"Jim's pager went off first, around 6:30 p.m.," Colleen Acri said. "Marty wasn't done until later. The doctors said everything went well; it just took a little longer because of the two arteries."

McConaghay recovered well from her surgery, but Acri's new kidney didn't want to work at first.

Doctors debated whether to give him a dialysis treatment the day after surgery, Colleen Acri said.

"He gained so much fluid -- probably 20 pounds of fluid -- that he couldn't breathe very well," Colleen Acri said. "Doctors even thought he had a heart attack, but it was all the fluid causing respiratory distress."

"I was the Pillsbury Doughboy," Marty Acri said.

Doctors agreed to give him dialysis, and his transplanted kidney started to work shortly afterward.

Colleen Acri even took a photo of the bag holding her husband's first urine sample.

"It was a big deal," she said.

Marty Acri was discharged 10 days after his surgery, almost a week after McConaghay had left the Cleveland Clinic.

Today, Marty Acri feels better than he has since he was in college. He lost all the weight from fluid buildup, and he has more strength and energy than he has felt in decades.

"I no longer get out of breath walking up stairs," said Acri, who plans to return to his job as a social worker. "I'm taking about 50 pills a day, many of the anti-rejection medications. But I'll get weaned off many of those."

The Acris and McConaghays have gone out for several dinners over the past few weeks, and it's clear a strong bond has developed between them.

McConaghay had difficulty responding when asked why she donated her kidney to someone she had never met. Marty Acri answered for her.

"It's just Sheri," he said. "It's the type of person she is. She saw a need in someone, and she said, 'I can do that.'"

DAVID BRUCE can be reached at 870-1736 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNbruce.

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