{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi","title":"Episode 046: I Couldn't Save My Father. So I Gave My Kidney to a Stranger with Matthew Harmody","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4232,"description":"Episode Summary\nDr. Matthew Harmody was twenty years old and an engineering student when his mother called to tell him his father had been rushed to the Cleveland Clinic. Both kidneys had completely failed. The man who had done everything for himself, a strong, healthy veteran, an outdoorsman, a mechanic, was going on emergent dialysis. For the next nine years, Matthew watched the decline up close. Nine years of a once-vibrant man being slowly hollowed out by a process that kept him alive but would not let him live. At the end of it, his father had had enough. He withdrew from dialysis. He passed away. And Matthew, who had spent those nine years reading everything he could find about kidney disease and helping his father navigate the medical system, decided to go back to school at thirty and become an emergency physician.\nHe spent twenty-five years in emergency medicine. He saw dialysis patients nearly every day. Every one of them reminded him of his father. And in 2017, he donated one of his own kidneys to a complete stranger through an anonymous living donation program, because if he could not save his father, he could at least give someone else the chance his father never had.\nThat would already be a complete story. It was only the beginning. A few years after the donation, a Kilimanjaro climb to raise awareness led to a bigger idea. What if a team of kidney donors climbed the highest peak in every single state in the country? What if they did it fast enough to break a Guinness World Record? What if they used the whole thing to show the world that giving a piece of yourself does not make you smaller?\nForty-one days and one hour later, Dr. Harmody and four other kidney donors had set the world record for the fastest team to summit all fifty state high points. From Denali in Alaska to Britton Hill in Florida. Through record snowfall in the Pacific Northwest. Through two in the morning trailheads in the cold and rain. Through RV laundromats and hunger and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bvg3em96AOxVPLqwVao5_m5h-Qdbm8H6_VrYU8WT40M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yZGQ2/MDBlNjNiYWJmZTM5/NjczNjA3OTA5OGJk/YjFhZi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}