Copyright 2005, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Racer Tim Bemisderfer married former race official Aimee Brothers January 20 in Winchester, Virginia, but this is not a typical wedding announcement.

Bemisderfer, a former lap record holder at Summit Point Raceway, is scheduled to receive a kidney transplant February 11 at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and the kidney will come from his new wife – who is a perfect blood match.

“Yeah, they told us to go play the lottery because that just doesn’t happen very often,” Aimee Bemisderfer told Roadracingworld.com Thursday.

In May 2004, Tim Bemisderfer was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) “the most common genetic, life threatening disease affecting more than 600,000 Americans and an estimated 12.5 million people worldwide,” according to the PKD Foundation.

In spite of his kidneys gradually shutting down to less than 10 percent functional capacity through the second half of 2004, Bemisderfer won a Formula USA National at his home track, Summit Point Raceway, in May and finished on the podium of the F-USA Thunderbike National in Homestead, Florida in October, before he started physically-draining dialysis treatments and other preparations for the transplant.

If Bemisderfer could not have found a friend or family member capable of and willing to donate a kidney to him, he would have been placed on a kidney transplant waiting list, where he could have stayed for up to five years, according to Aimee Bemisderfer.

Will Tim Bemisderfer race again? “That’s up to him,” said his new wife. “I’m sure when he feels like it he’s going to want to. Just because you have something happen in life doesn’t mean you stop living.”