Devoted mother Diana Berry is a giant step closer to giving the ultimate gift to her son — the chance to live a normal life.

Music lecturer Matt Trinder, 24, desperately needs a new kidney and must spend 12 hours a week on dialysis until he gets one.

But Mrs Berry, 52, a barmaid at Summertown’s Grove House Club, cannot donate an organ directly to her son because their blood types don’t match.

Instead, she is signed up to the Paired Exchange Programme, which allows her to donate an organ to another person in need of a kidney, whose friend or relative will donate one to Matt.

The pioneering scheme was set up after donating organs to patients who were not family or friends became legal in 2007.

And last night Mrs Berry said she and her son had been matched with another pair — the first successful pairing involving a donor or patient from Oxford.

She said: “I’m over the moon – I jumped all over the place when I heard the news. I’m just so relieved. We really need to move on with our lives.

“It could all still go wrong even up to an hour before the operation, but we have our fingers and toes crossed.”

Mrs Berry and Matt, who grew up in Abingdon, joined the Paired Exchange Programme last year.

The national scheme works by processing the details of everyone on the register every three months – January, April, July and October – to match pairs up.

Mrs Berry said she hoped to be able to have her kidney removed as early as April.

She said: “I have not really thought about the operation yet, but I know Matt’s scared.

“He’s never had an operation before and he’s worried it won’t be successful.”

Matt needs dialysis because he suffers from a disease called IgA Nephropathy, a kidney disorder that occurs when IgA — a protein that helps the body fight infections — settles in the kidneys.

Dr Phil Mason, a consultant nephrologist at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, said there were only nine or 10 pairs signed up to the Paired Exchange Programme in Oxford and that Mrs Berry and Matt were the first to be successfully paired up.

He said: “It’s great news for Diana and her son.

“It’s a fantastic scheme — anything which can increase the number of transplants is to be applauded.”

About 50 pairs across the country are signed up to the Paired Exchange Programme.

Mrs Berry and niece Kayleigh Adams, 21, from Wallingford, are taking part in a sponsored tandem skydive at Weston-on-the-Green in aid of the kidney unit at the Churchill Hospital on Thursday.

Mrs Berry said: “I’m not nervous, but I know I will be on the day.”

The Oxford Mail is encouraging readers to become organ donors.

More than 9,000 people in the UK need an organ transplant that could save or dramatically improve their life.

Most are waiting for a kidney, others for a heart, lung or liver transplant.

The Paired Exchange Programme is just one way to help a family member or friend in need of an organ. It increases the ability of potential kidney transplant recipients to receive kidney donations from living donors when they have a willing, designated donor whose blood type is incompatible to their own. In an exchange, a kidney from such a donor is matched and transplanted into the recipient of a second donor-patient pair, and vice versa.

To sign the NHS Organ Donor Register, visit uktransplant.org.uk or call 0845 606 0400.

Anyone interested in the Paired Exchange Programme or in making a donation to the Churchill Hospital can call Mrs Berry on 01865 512643.