Florida teacher Donna Hoagland went above and beyond for one special student. She donated one of her kidneys to help the child’s sick parent.
4th grader Troy Volk’s mother Anahita has been sick for almost half of his short life. His worries over when and if his mother would receive a kidney took a toll on the little boy, according to Statesman. Hoagland noticed that something was up with him when Volk would get choked up trying to answer simple math questions, which he usually excelled at. The boy’s struggle affected her deeply, and she researched a way to help his family.
“A lot of days, he looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders,” she said.
Hoagland asked for a parent-teacher conference with Volk’s mother. The sick mother explained that she had discovered she had kidney disease when she was pregnant with Troy’s younger brother, Armaan. By the time Armaan was one-year-old, she was in full blown kidney failure. At the time of the conference, she had spent years on dialysis and was on the transplant list. Sadly, there was not a single person in her large family that was a match, adding more despair to her and her children.
However, the parent-teacher conference for her son Troy ended up being the life-saving miracle that Volk needed. A simple joke that the mother of two made asking the teacher if she wanted to donate a kidney to her, turned out to be anything but a joke.
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Hoagland shared that she had done extensive research on kidney disease hoping to help her sick friend. After she was not a match for her friend, the teacher reached out to her students mom letting her know she wanted to be tested. It was destiny. Hoagland was a perfect match. The transplant was performed with no complications. Today Volk’s one kidney is functioning on the same level as two good kidneys.
“I got your super kidney,” she told Hoagland.
When Troy Volk found out his teacher Donna Hoagland was donating a life-saving kidney to his sick mother, he was flabbergasted.
“We all went crazy about it. Finding out it was my teacher, shocking. It was shocking. I was blown away,” the little boy revealed.
Hoagland is truly an inspiring woman, who is unfazed by all the attention she is receiving for what she calls an act of kindness.