Determined Paramedics Push Through Blizzard For Kidney Transplant Recipient

STONY BROOK, N.Y. (CBSNewYork)-- While the blizzard and the big mess it left behind have been a headache for many people, there's a woman on Long Island who will look back on the storm as the crazy day she got a second chance at life.

"It was like a miracle, it really was," Melanie Chirichella, a kidney transplant recipient, told CBS2's Cindy Hsu. "When she called and said, 'We have a kidney for you,' I almost fell off the bed."

Sixty-four-year old Chirichella had been waiting a year and a half for a kidney transplant. During the blizzard she got the call from her doctors who had found a perfect match.

"You had no idea when you went to bed Friday night that we were gonna call you in the middle of a blizzard with a kidney," Dr. Frank Darras of Stony Brook University Hospital said.

At first, emergency crews told her there was no way an ambulance could make it through white-out conditions to bring Chirichella nearly 20 miles from her home in Bohemia New York to Stony Brook University Hospital.

But paramedic Peter Amato was determined to make it happen. Once he arrived at Chirichella's home, he shoveled through two feet of snow to get to her door. The nightmare continued when they hit the road.

"We maneuvered around cars that were stuck all over the place and cars spinning out in front of us. My fear was that somebody was going to crash into us or we were going to get stuck and that was going to delay you getting here and I wanted to make sure you were going to get the organ that you needed," Amato said.

Amato knows how life-changing a kidney transplant can be, his brother had received a life-saving transplant a decade ago.

"Thank God it is working, I thought there was going to be complications. Thank God everything is going smooth," Chirichella said.

"I think the realization was when I said to you: 'One person's tragedy is another person's miracle,'" Amato added.

The kidney came from a brain-dead patient in South Carolina, and Chirichella said she hopes more people will sign the back of their driver's license to become an organ donor.