Everyone told Nancy Miller she was crazy when she announced her plans to donate her kidney to somebody - anybody - who needed it.

But she had worked at a dialysis unit before and wanted to keep others from enduring the ordeal she witnessed daily.

The Glen Burnie resident approached the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore with her plans last year, around the same time that a co-worker's wife was being treated for kidney failure. Miller wanted to give her kidney to Cindy Wickesser, but they weren't a match.

But Miller matched a man in Minneapolis who needed a kidney, and Wickesser matched his wife,...