Conn. man finds kidney donor via Facebook

STALLINGS, N.C. – For a decade now, David Ensely has lived with polycystic kidney disease. Doctors told him he needed a kidney to survive. He found one on Facebook.

"There's been times that I've been so sick I just wanted to die," Ensely said.

David’s sister, Jennifer Scoggins, set up a Facebook page to find her brother a kidney. She knew a positive outcome wasn't likely, but did it anyway after hearing it had worked for someone else.

"I just thought about it, 'Well, what do we have to lose?'” Scoggins said. “I mean, at this point, as sick as he was, why not?"

An old friend of David and Jennifer’s found the page on the social media site. He hadn’t spoken to either of them, besides on Facebook, for 15 years.

He mentioned the page to his wife, Amy Cunningham. She had never met them before.

"I said, 'Oh, I really hope somebody donates a kidney for them, I said, that's really a shame,” Cunningham said. “Every now and then it would tug at me."

So much so, she decided to get tested and see if it was a match. The odds were 20 million to one, but the result was a miracle.

"David and I are as close of a match as a sibling is," she said.

Cunningham’s motivation: her dad had died five years ago. And Ensely also has two daughters – Leslie, 16, and Mallory, 20.

Cunningham said she didn’t want Leslie and Mallory to lose their dad.

"They need to be walked down the aisle, she said. “He needs to be there when they have children. If I can help another girl keep her daddy for 10, 15, 20 years just by donating a kidney... heck I got two."

Ensely called Cunningham a special person. “I mean, there's not many people out there that will do what she's doing," he said. The whole thing about it, it's a miracle, it's a miracle."

(Copyright (c) 2011 Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)