Donor Diaries
Donor Diaries
Laurie Lee
From One Kidney To Many | EP 37
33 minutes Posted Feb 3, 2026 at 6:00 am.
A New Way To Multiply Donor Impact
Podcast Mission And Today’s Focus
Meet Dr. Friedewald And Northwestern
Kidney Paired Donation 101
Non-Directed Donors And Chains
Using Deceased Donors To Start Chains
Military Share DDIC: How It Works
Quality, Parity, And Directed Donation
Logistics With OPOs And Hospitals
When A Deceased Kidney Beats Waiting
Benefits, Risks, And Blood Type Fairness
0:00
33:18
Download MP3
Show notes
Send us Fan Mail One kidney can change many lives—if we let it start a chain. We sit down with Dr. John Friedewald, transplant nephrologist at Northwestern Medicine, to unpack a breakthrough: using a deceased donor kidney to initiate a living donor chain that moves multiple recipients off the waitlist and ultimately delivers a living kidney back to a service member at Walter Reed. We break down how kidney paired donation works, why non-directed donors supercharge matching, and what changes w...