Bethany Goralski was ready to donate a kidney to her dad.
Mark had spent years battling Crohn’s disease and kidney failure, and needed a second transplant. But by the time his daughter was finally able to donate, doctors said he was no longer healthy enough to receive it. He died in 2018, and Bethany and her sister Hannah, from Illinois, were left with the emptiness—and an organ that no longer had anyone to save.
A month later, Hannah called Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In March 2019, the two sisters went into surgery just 24 hours apart, each to donate a kidney to someone she had never met. They did it with a simple hope: that two other families would be spared some of the pain they already knew.
Hannah put it this way: her dad was always giving and helping others, and donating was a way to honor him. Two sisters, two strangers, and the generosity of a father who keeps on giving.
