No relative or friend proved to be a suitable donor match for Michael Andrade's mom. Weeks dragged on, with Lucy on a waiting list, while her condition grew visibly worse. "I was just skin and bones," she says.

Michael, the youngest of her four children, decided they needed to cast a wider net.

Under the headline "Please help us find a liver donor," he added a grainy photo of himself as a boy on his mom's lap and wrote a detailed appeal on a Tumblr blog post.

"I'm just really worried, and I don't want to lose my mother, especially without me trying everything I can do to save her. The least I can do is spread the word and try to find a donor for her," he wrote. Hundreds of readers spread the word, reblogging it on their own sites.

Meanwhile, after no one could help Graeme McNaughton's cousin, who died of ovarian cancer when she was just 16, he vowed that if an opportunity came up to help save someone from the same grief, he would want to do something.

Michael's digital prayer was about to be answered.

(READ the moving story in Toronto Globe and Mail)