Doctor Daniel Aghion saves lives as a neurosurgeon at Memorial Healthcare System, but his commitment to helping others goes way beyond the operating room.
In 2021, the father of four donated one of his kidneys to a complete stranger — a 29-year-old woman in New York whose life depended on finding a match.
“Knowing that what we did, really, me and my family, what we did, preventing a young woman from having to be on dialysis and the potential of, you know, a normal, healthy life for a young woman,” he said. “It’s not a feeling that you can really describe.”
Aghion had enrolled in a donor registry years earlier. A first match didn’t work out, but when a second match came through. This time, with the young woman in New York, he didn’t hesitate.
“I decided that our job is really just to give, you know, my job is to give, and that’s something that we try to live our life by,” he said.
Recovery took six weeks. He never met his recipient, but he did meet her parents. When asked if he would do it all over again, his answer was immediate.
“One thousand percent. My life is normal. My life is entirely normal. I function the way I did, as if I were to have two kidneys,” he said. “But this is a feeling that again I can’t really describe in terms of the amount of good that we’re able to do for other people.”
His story doesn’t end there. In October 2023, while visiting family in Israel during the Jewish holidays, Aghion found himself amid the October 7 terrorist attacks. Rather than returning home, he stayed to treat the wounded.
“And I put them on the plane and I essentially told my wife, I said, I’m not getting on the plane. I’m not going back home. She looked at me and she said, I know who I married,” he recalled. “For me, that really gave me the motivation and tasked me with what I knew I needed to do.”
He worked around the clock, sometimes on 24-hour shifts, once again putting others first.
“We can look at each other as strangers, or we can look at each other as brothers and sisters, and ultimately, for me, there’s very few times in our lives where we’re able to really have an impact and really show people what we’re made of,” he said. “I believe that we’re really put in this world for one reason and that reason is to give in whatever capacity we can.”
It’s a story that reminds us what’s possible when we choose to give.
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