An Illinois classroom lesson in kindness turned into something much bigger this month, when one teacher gave her co-worker’s husband the gift of life.
“I felt like I could help,” said art teacher Lillian Johnston, who donated one of her kidneys to Brad Szczecinski, the husband of her colleague, Allie. “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.”
It turns out, she was.
Brad, a father of two, had lived with a donated kidney for nearly three decades. But after contracting COVID-19 in 2021, he began to experience kidney damage. Earlier this year, doctors told him he needed a second transplant.
“There’s about a half a million people on dialysis right now, about 100,000 people on the [transplant] list,” Brad shared. “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.”
His wife, Allie, who works as a social emotional learning coach at Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, did everything she could to get the word out. She posted on social media and encouraged others to sign up as potential donors.
“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 it’s not like a binding commitment,” Allie recalled. “Just tossing your name in there, you never know what’s going to happen.”
Those words struck Johnston deeply.
“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,’” Johnston said. “I just felt really strongly about helping.”
The two underwent their surgeries at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where Brad even experienced a groundbreaking procedure: an awake kidney transplant.
“[The donor kidney] was amazing,” Brad said. “It was almost like it was glowing, in a way.”
For Johnston, the choice was rooted in her own life experiences. She had grown up watching her mom donate blood every month, and years ago, a blood transfusion saved her life after she gave birth to her third child.
Now, Brad and Johnston say their bond is unbreakable.
“We’ve gone from strangers to family now,” Brad said, smiling.
And Johnston hopes her story inspires others: “I would really like people to know that [organ donation] is very common, and it’s very low risk. 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.”
- From Unwanted to Unstoppable: Chewy the Shih Tzu Finds His Forever Family in a Senior Living Center - September 18, 2025
- Teen Who Started Reading Program During Pandemic Still Brings Joy to Special Needs Kids Five Years Later - September 18, 2025
- Uber Ride Turns Into a Life-Changing Friendship That’s Still Going Strong Seven Years Later - September 18, 2025
