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Matt Harmody, MD, a former emergency medicine resident at UNC Hospitals, recently returned to Chapel Hill for something he’d been waiting decades for—the chance to donate a kidney.


Matt Harmody, MD, a former emergency medicine resident at UNC Hospitals, recently returned to Chapel Hill for something he’d been waiting decades for—the chance to donate a kidney.

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Matt Harmody

Matt Harmody, MD, a former emergency medicine resident at UNC Hospitals, recently returned to Chapel Hill for something he’d been waiting decades for—the chance to donate a kidney.

Harmody finished his residency in 2000, and has since worked at hospitals across North Carolina. Last year the then 56-year-old returned to UNC as a patient. For more than 30 years he had been wrestling with the idea of donating a kidney—anonymously and unmatched—as a tribute to his father who died of renal failure.

The story “Paying it Forward” in this month’s edition of Emergency Physicians Monthly details the passing of Harmody’s father after nearly a decade of struggle with kidney disease. Harmody recounts his father’s decision not to accept a kidney donation from a family member, and how that always stayed with him. Read the story here to learn more about Harmody’s decision to donate, and how that set off a chain of events with other donors and recipients.