I'm out in back my mind I knew something was wrong and it was not going to be good
he sat us down and first thing he says is I hate to tell anybody this he says that what
you got is terminal there's nothing we can do for you so you need to get on lung transplant
list and of course my wife was devastated so I've never had anything wrong with me ever I don't take
any kind of medicines for blood pressure heart medicine and I'm 58 I've got people that I work
with that are 40 and 50 that are taking all sorts of medicines and whatnot that the term idiopathic
pulmonary fibrosis really means scarring of the lungs and we don't know why you have it
but it's a very specific subset of patients who have scarring of the lungs that we don't know
why they have it and what's particularly important about this subset is that their
prognosis is worse than many cancers so median survival of three to five years is truly worse
than many if not most cancers we were following him in clinic and we could see that every time
he came into clinic there was a continued decline in his breathing test and we know
that in individuals who have continued declines in their breathing test those are individuals
who are very high-risk to die but despite that the other I think fantastic thing about him is
that we we asked him to lose weight and he lost weight we asked him to exercise and even though
he didn't feel well and even though it took lots and lots of oxygen to allow him to exercise he
exercised so he is I think a very good example of what we really hope for mr. happy-go-lucky failure
is not an option that's why he is the perfect person for lung transplant because he will just
surprised everyone I think
you
as far as the procurement for mr. Fleurette things were routine once the organs arrived here in the
hospital as you saw with mr. Flores they come in this ice chest and there are several bags that are
all packed sterile II at the donor hospital to make sure the lungs stay sterile throughout the
entire process the lungs are lifted from the ice chest into sterile basins on the or back
table and when we take the lungs they come out as a block the two lungs attached together with
the donors trachea and also part of the left atrium the back of the donors heart dividing
the left atrium and dividing the airway and also the main pulmonary artery and then we place the
right and left lungs into each of their own sterile basins on ice and typically at this
point whoever started the operation one of my cardiac colleagues has placed the patient on
cardiopulmonary bypass and has started removing the the recipients lungs then I assist with
the rest of the operation removing the diseased lungs and then sewing in the the donor lungs so
they come in and they get their surgery you know when when do they get off a breathing
machine well most folks are off the breathing machine within two days and when do they get
out of the intensive care unit the average time and the intensive care unit is about four days
or so and then when is the average time that people get out of the hospital here at MUSC
our average time is it's just about two weeks a little bit less than two weeks so we really get
you up we get you walking we get you out of the hospital quickly full recovery - you feel like
you're at your best is six months then dysley better I have any hoses I don't I can breathe
sit around the house without the wife trying to choke me to death by cutting off my oxygen
having my husband back having the person that I married and the person that I remember instead
of this very frustrated person that can't breathe and is attached to the umbilical
cord of oxygen having having life returned much more to normal my goals are to finish up rehab
sooner than they want me to and go back to work hold on and it's just such a miracle I
guess that's what that's what it comes to my mind is that here I have him back and this is
what three weeks out from this transplant and he's as normal as he was the day that I married
him in the day that I met him so to me it's just amazing the transformation in three weeks