BURTON, Ohio — For Hannah Bomback, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Berkshire Middle School, it's a lesson worth emulating outside the classroom.
This past April, Bomback donated one of her kidneys to help the mother of one of her students get closer to a lifesaving transplant.
It's been a journey for Arieauna Johnson as her mother, Melissa, battles kidney failure.
"It’s been difficult. That’s why I've been helping her a lot," Arieauna Johnson explained.
"I have something called polycystic kidney disease, and cysts grow on the kidney and take over the function, but they also get very large," Melissa Johnson said. "So I had to get both my kidneys removed. They were like 10 pounds of kidney each."
Melissa, a mother of five, started dialysis in 2022 when her kidneys began to fail and then moved back to Northeast Ohio.
"We spent five years in Tennessee and came back when my health started to get bad because we wanted to get closer to the Cleveland Clinic, because they're the best of the best," Melissa Johnson said.
Bomback, who taught Johnson's four older children, became worried when she noticed Arieauna was absent from class last fall.
"When she was absent, I was asking another teacher if they knew why she was missing, and I found out her mom was having surgery," Bomback said. "I knew I needed to do something."
After weeks of researching, Bomback made the decision to donate a kidney, despite not being a perfect match for Melissa.
"My mother was born with one kidney — so I knew that a completely normal life is possible with one kidney," Bomback said.
Bomback donated one of her kidneys to a stranger this past April. Through the National Kidney Registry, that donation generated a voucher that moved Melissa, who has O-negative blood type, up the transplant waiting list.
"It was pretty smooth, I'll say," Bomback said of the donation process.
"Now they're actively looking for a living donor for me, which would not have been possible if she hadn't have done that," Melissa Johnson said. "I would have just hoped for a deceased donor, which could take years, if ever. Getting a living donor is a much better option."
There is no perfect match yet, but Melissa said the act of generosity has given her hope.
"It's the thought of getting my life back," Melissa Johnson said. "There's so many people waiting for a kidney right now. You can live a perfectly normal life with one kidney. So if you're willing to share your spare, it could help a lot of people."
"When you give to other people, your life is made so much better," Bomback said. "It feels weird because I personally have gotten so much joy out of it. I've benefited so much."
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard, on Facebook ClayLePardTV or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com.
