Man to donate kidney to stranger

Man to donate kidney to stranger

Permanently injured Ground Zero worker met patient online

By STACEY ALTHERR, Newsday
January 7, 2007

John Feal knows a lot about suffering. Permanently disabled during rescue efforts at the World Trade Center, he dedicated his life to helping others. Now, he is giving even more than money or time - he is donating a precious kidney to a former New York man he met over the Internet.

"He went to my Web site, www.fealgoodfoundation.com, and told me what good work I was doing," Feal said of Paul Grossfeld, a former Queens resident who now lives in Marlboro, N.J. After Grossfeld told him he needed a kidney, Feal didn't think twice. "I told him, I'll do it."

Seven days after the terrorist attacks, Feal was working demolition at Ground Zero when an 8,000-pound steel beam fell onto his left foot. The man next to him fainted when he saw the blood spurting from the injury. Feal, an Army veteran from Long Island, N.Y., made a tourniquet out of his belt and yelled for help.

After doctors at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan stabilized the foot with pins, gangrene set in. Feal lost half his foot. Through his recovery, he said he felt his life spiraling downward. He couldn't work, he had to cope with excruciating pain, and, most of all, he had to deal with the unending frustration of trying to get disability benefits.

But Feal, 40, turned his misfortune into a will to help others. He started the FealGood Foundation, which helps injured Sept. 11 first responders and workers navigate the maze of paperwork for disability payments and medical treatment. He also raises money for those financially devastated by the event.

Grossfeld, in the meantime, had his own crisis. He was in desperate need of a kidney.

Grossfeld spent 25 years as a volunteer paramedic in Queens and later on Long Island, where he lived before moving to New Jersey. Two years ago, he was coaching baseball when a player told him he didn't look well.

Grossfeld, 55, who has diabetes, was in kidney failure. He is now on dialysis three days a week. A transplanted kidney is his only chance for a normal life, he said, but every time it looked like he might get one, the opportunity fell through.

Disillusioned, Grossfeld said he was surfing the Internet one night when he found Feal's Web site. He wrote Feal and asked whether he could link his Web site requesting a kidney to Feal's.

"He called the next morning and introduced himself," Grossfeld said. "He said, 'You got yourself a kidney.' "

Although they are not the same blood type, they said they have been deemed compatible by the renal transplant team at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan and will know in two weeks the date of the surgery.

URL: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/health_and_fitness/article/0,1406,KNS_310_5261842,00.html

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