A woman gives her partner the best surprise ever: a new shot at life.
'It's so funny how things work out.'
When Lori Intericchio and Alana Duran matched on the dating app Tinder in August 2015, little did they know what was about to unfold in two short months of dating.
They were about to have matching scars.
Happy Lori and Alana. All images by Lori Intericchio, used with permission.
Alana, who had been diagnosed with lupus at the age of 12, was living on dialysis and had been searching for a kidney for the past four years.
Her family wasn't a donor match, according to Fox 5, so she put herself on the waiting list. And there she patiently waited for years.
Lori soon learned about Alana's predicament. She knew her girlfriend wasn't living her best possible life without the care she needed. By their third or fourth date, she decided to look into the situation for herself.
It turned out the two women had even more in common than they realized. Lori was a kidney-transplant match for Alana.
"By the time I learned that I was a match a couple of weeks later I had already done a ton of research and that really took away any fear," Lori told TODAY.
She decided she was going to go for it (!), but not without telling Alana in the greatest way ever.
Lori’s surprise video announcing their donor match melted hearts worldwide on Facebook.
First you see Alana rummaging through a box of some of her favorite little things. You know, glitter pens, Star Wars Band-Aids, junk food. She then slowly starts to make her way to the bottom.
She got pencils!
She's greeted with a familiar card of the Tinder screen when they matched just weeks before, and Alana looks a bit confused. But then the wording hits her.
Accept kidney or stay on waitinglist?!
The exact moment Alana found out.
"Who knew that when we both swiped right on Tinder that day, that we would be more than just girlfriends but that she would be my kidney donor!" Alana captioned.
In February 2016, Alana and Lori both underwent successful surgeries. Alana now has the kidney she needed and a new shot at life.
And Lori's used the opportunity to give a much-needed wake-up call on the ridiculous stigma and restrictions placed on certain donors.
"I love the outpouring of love and support that Alana and I have been receiving," she said, "but it pains me to know that if we were a couple of gay men, my kidney would be considered at risk."
"While I might be able to donate a kidney to her, I wouldn't be able to donate blood or tissue. I feel strongly that our federal government should be able to look past a person's sexual orientation in deciding whether or not they are suitable to give the gift of life."
The reality is that someone gets added to the donor waiting list every 10 minutes.
And an average of 22 people will die each day waiting for transplants that never happen because of the shortage of donated organs, says the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The number of people on the waiting list only continues to grow. It's up to every single one of us to help fix the gap by registering and by putting pressure on the government to make tissue, blood, and organ donations more inclusive. (They've started making some strides on that.)
The internet is capable of connecting us in remarkable ways. We can build relationships, play games, register to become organ donors, and sometimes even find our perfect match.
For Alana, that perfect match turned out to be her girlfriend Lori, who she would have never met if it hadn't been for technology (and maybe a little luck).
What an amazing world we live in.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.