A Chain Reaction of Kindness
Ever since Gianna Graw ’21 lost her father, William, a Jersey City police officer, to cancer, she has held onto the memory of how caring and compassionate he was.
“He was willing to do anything to help anyone, even a stranger,” says Graw, who earned an MA in Higher Education and will pursue a career in disability services.
This past December, Graw, inspired by her father’s kindness, donated a kidney. Hackensack University Medical Center’s partnership with the National Kidney Registry, an organization that facilitates living-donor kidney transplants, made it possible for her to become a “nonspecific” donor, someone whose donation can help someone she does not know.
Graw’s donation set off a chain of kidney transplants that spanned the country. “It was exciting, but I also felt a little detached until it all happened and four recipients had their transplants and surgeries,” she says.
“Sometimes when planning and doing the prep work for something, it’s hard to realize what is going on and the emotions behind it until it’s actually happening, and that’s definitely how it was for me,” Graw recalls. “It wasn’t until my surgery was done and I was in the hospital recovering that it sunk in what just happened. It was touching and powerful, but words don’t do it justice.”