More than 90,000 people in the United States await a kidney transplant. But that number is two less, thanks to a Chicago doctor who says she just wanted to help.
April is National Donate Life Month, but this doctor says her decision to donate was years in the making.
As a nephrologist at Northwestern, she cares for countless patients on the kidney waitlist and saw an opportunity to save a life and raise awareness.
“I have seen so many patients that need a kidney transplant,” said Dr. Aleksandra Gmurczyk. “They want a kidney transplant, and they want it so much like they talk about it. Like, ‘When am I getting a transplant?’ And I just hear it all the time and with among my own dialysis patients, even the patients in the clinic who aren’t on dialysis yet.”
Gmurczyk decided to donate one of her kidneys. But she didn’t want to donate specifically to one person.
“I just feel so bad for every one of them,” Gmurczyk said. “And I just, I cannot pick one, just one person, because my heart would break for the other one. So I just could not do that. I couldn’t pick just one. It would be just like picking one child over another. I cannot do that.”
Instead, she was part of a paired kidney donation. She was matched with a woman in Virginia whose husband then donated to a patient at Northwestern Medicine.
“I was just going to help,” Gmurczyk said. “I just wanted to throw my kidney out into the pool and help someone who needs it.”
Gmurczyk also wanted to increase trust in the process and inspire others to donate.
She says some of her patients are leery about undergoing a transplant because of mistrust in the healthcare system. And it’s already paid off, as one of her skeptical patients is now being evaluated for a transplant.
The transplants took place in February. Gmurczyk took two weeks off work and is now using her experience to help educate others about the need for living donors.
This isn’t the first time a doctor has donated a kidney to help their patients as a doctor in Maine donated his kidney to a former patient in 2022, and a nephrologist in Chicago donated to her patient back in 2002.
Click here to learn more about organ donation and to join the Michigan Organ Donor Registry.
