NEW YORK -- Scheduling his wedding saved New Yorker Matthew Fulgieri's life when the man he met that day turned out to be the perfect kidney donor.
Fulgieri, 42, received a successful kidney transplant Nov. 6 from Rick Bellando, who booked Fulgieri's wedding and became a friend, the New York Daily News said.
Fulgieri was dying from a polycystic kidney disease -- a genetic disorder at play in his mother's, grandmother's and brother's deaths -- when he met Bellando. He needed a kidney by year's end, but faced the average five- to seven-year wait on donor lists, the Daily News said.
"I'm so thankful," Fulgieri told the Daily News "He didn't just save me, he saved my boys from not having a father as they grow up and my wife from not having a husband."
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