A love for boy bands and cruises brought two strangers together and saved a life.
Christina Meyer, a New Berlin physician, has been a fan of the band New Kids on The Block since she was 13 years old.
“They are always really great to their fans, and Donnie Wahlberg particularly is always about spreading love and helping each other out,” Meyer explained.
Spreading love and helping others is something the doctor and her favorite band have in common.
Meyer was on the annual New Kids on the Block cruise in October 2022 when a message from a fellow fan there caught her eye.
“She had a banner on the lido deck of the cruise, saying that she was looking for a kidney donor. And I saw her banner,” recalled Meyer.
That's all it took for her to start the process of changing a stranger's life forever. After seeing the banner, she began looking into the kidney donation process for the fellow NKOTB fan.
It took around 10 months of testing for her to be approved to donate her kidney to Californian, Theresa Crockett, who suffers from poly-cystic kidney disease.
“We've become close friends, we text pretty much every day now,” Meyer said. “We got to hang out last year at the Block Con, which is like the biggest On the Block convention in Chicago.”
After a successful transplant in August, Crockett and Meyer reunited for the first time after the surgery in a special place: The Kelly Clarkson Show where the new friends joined their favorite band to share their story.
“It was awesome. I still can't believe it happened. I’m still like thinking it was a dream, but it was a great experience,” Meyer said.
Now she's encouraging others who are able to consider becoming a donor themselves.
“You can save somebody's life. Like in Theresa's case, she was about to have to go on dialysis, which is, you know, a hard process on the body and we luckily were able to get the the transplant done before she had to take that step,” Meyer said. “It's great to see that she's doing so well, and she's able to enjoy her life and spend more time with her family. I'm so happy I was able to help her do that.”
For more information on how to donate an organ in Wisconsin, visit the state’s organ donation website.
You can watch the full episode of Christina on Kelly Clarkson at 3 p.m. Friday, March 8, on NBC 26.
