Paulette Chandler watched helplessly as high blood pressure destroyed her husband's kidneys and forced him on to dialysis. She wanted to give him one of her kidneys so he wouldn't have to spend years on the transplant waiting list. Unfortunately, they have different blood types, so their kidneys wouldn't be a good match.

As it turns out, though, her blood type does match another patient who needs a kidney transplant, Francisco Torres. Torres and his wife don't match, either. But Torres' wife does match Chandler's husband. So the two couples have agreed to exchange kidneys.

Barring last-minute medical complications, the kidney swap will be done today at University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. More than 80 paired-kidney swaps have been done around the country, but today's transplants will be the first paired exchange in Illinois.

With more than 65,000 people on the national kidney transplant list, patients are having to wait as long as six years to get kidneys from deceased donors.