For over nine months, Delayne Ivanowski, of Kirkwood, Missouri, kept a secret from her dad that ended up saving his life.
Delayne, a 25-year-old nurse at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis, donated her kidney to her dad, John Ivanowski. He’d told his daughter for months that he did not want her to be his donor because he didn’t want anything to happen to her.
Two years ago John was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, a type of kidney disease that can lead to kidney failure, according to the National Institutes of Health. Living with the disease meant he had to be on dialysis for four to five hours, four days a week, a quality of life that his daughter said was not right for him.
Not wanting her dad to potentially wait years to find a donor, Delayne went through the monthslong process of getting approved to be her dad’s kidney donor in secret, even while living at home with him and her mom.
John said he had no idea what his daughter was up to, but does remember getting the life-changing phone call last August that the transplant team had found him a donor.
The day after the surgery, John learned his anonymous donor was his daughter when she walked into his room wearing a hospital gown.
Delayne posted a video of the moment, which has since gone viral on TikTok, garnering hundreds of thousands of views.