An Illinois teacher is giving a fellow teacher's husband a second shot at life after donating one of her kidneys to him earlier this month.
Lillian Johnston opened up to ABC News this week about her decision to donate her kidney.
"I felt like I could help. I'm in pretty good health myself. I have two healthy kidneys, and I felt like I was in a position where this is something that I could do if I were to be a match," Johnston said.
The longtime art teacher ended up matching with Brad Szczecinski, who is married to Johnston's co-worker, Allie Szczecinski, a social emotional learning coach at Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois.
Brad Szczecinski was in need of a second kidney transplant. The father of two told ABC News he has a type of autoimmune disease called immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy, a condition where antibody clump deposits in the kidneys cause inflammation and kidney damage that could eventually lead to chronic kidney disease and kidney failure, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Brad Szczecinski said he lived with a donated and functioning kidney for about 29 years until he experienced kidney damage after contracting COVID-19 in 2021. He said doctors told him he needed a new kidney earlier this year.
That's when Allie Szczecinski started to spread the word in their community, including at her workplace and on social media. She told ABC News she shared a hospital form for potential donors to fill out and sign up for more information.
"I said, 'Even if there's just a whisper in you that's saying, "Maybe I'll fill this out,"' I wanted people to know that if you complete this form from Northwestern saying you're even interested, it's not like a binding commitment," Allie Szczecinski said. "Just tossing your name in there, you never know what's going to happen, and then also encouraging people to share that post."
Johnston was one of multiple people who filled out the form and said she felt compelled to sign up to get tested because she had grown up seeing her mom donate blood on a monthly basis, and when she had her third child, she required a blood transfusion that ultimately saved her life.
"The line, 'If there's a whisper in your heart,' really got to me, because I thought, 'There's more than a whisper in my heart.' I just felt really strongly about helping," Johnston said.
Both Brad Szczecinski and Johnston had their respective surgeries at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Brad Szczecinski's procedure was particularly noteworthy, because he had a new type of surgery where he could be awake for most of the time and even see Johnston's kidney before it was transplanted to him.
"[The donor kidney] was amazing. It was almost like it was glowing, in a way," he said.
Both Brad Szczecinski and Johnston say they've gone from being strangers to family now, connected by Johnston's lifesaving action. The two also said they want to raise awareness about living organ donation.
"I would really like people to know that [organ donation] is very common, and it's very low risk," Johnston said. "You can have confidence that you will be OK ... and obviously, you have the chance to really make a difference in someone else's life."
Brad Szczecinski added, "There's about a half a million people on dialysis right now, about 100,000 people on the [transplant] list. I would love it if both of those numbers were a lot smaller ... There's very few things that we can do while we're walking this planet that kind of rival giving another person life through actually, physically giving them a part of you. I think it's very special."
