Donor knocks on US patient's door

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An American kidney patient spent four years on a donor waiting list only to find his perfect match through a chance knock on his Idaho front door.

Travelling salesman Jamie Howard offered up one of his kidneys after asking Paul Sucher to explain why he could not afford a new vacuum cleaner.

"It was something I was called to do," said Mr Howard, 35.

Mr Sucher, who had spent three years having dialysis, now says he feels as healthy as before his kidneys failed.

"I'm so healthy right now, it's almost like [losing my kidneys] never happened," he told Idaho's Times-News newspaper.

Cash concern

Both Mr Sucher's kidneys failed in 2004 because of high blood pressure.

And while his name went on a donor waiting list at the University of Colorado, he barely moved up the list in two-and-a-half years.

"You're waiting for a dead man's kidney," he said. "There's never enough."

That all changed when Mr Howard, an Idaho Falls-based vacuum cleaner salesman, knocked on the Sucher's front door.

But it was far from simple convincing the Colorado doctors to accept Mr Howard as a donor.

Quite apart from stringent medical tests to check whether the two were compatible, and whether Mr Howard's kidney was itself in good shape, officials were concerned money might have changed hands.

Eventually doctors were convinced when Mr Sucher pointed out the only people making money from the $250,000 (£125,000) surgery were the surgical team, the Times-News reported.

The surgery went ahead in early August, and both men - who are now developing a friendship - appear to be recovering well.