Here's a good news story from Cunard's Queen Victoria. The Daily Mail reports that a 64-year-old woman had been on the waiting list for a kidney transplant for more than two years. She needed dialysis twice a day, and fearing her condition would become fatal before she ever received a kidney, she and her husband decided to go on one "final" trip aboard Cunard to the Mediterranean while she was still well enough.
The ship departed Southampton yesterday afternoon, and later last night, when it was still just about 50 miles southwest of The Lizard in Cornwall (at the southwest tip of England), the call came to the ship - a kidney had become available for the woman. The big problem was that the woman had to be at the hospital in five hours to prepare for surgery or they would have to move to the next person on the list.
Queen Victoria's captain called in the Royal Navy, and everyone rose to the occasion. Within an hour she was being hoisted from Queen Victoria's deck to an RAF Sea King helicopter hovering above and then flown the 400 miles to the hospital in Cambridge.
The Mail's story leaves off as the woman was at the hospital this morning, on time, and being prepped for surgery. We assume there's a happy ending.
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