COLLECTIVE BREATH

Our dear wife, mother, grandmother, and friend Colleen suffers from a rare lung disease that, beginning in the fall of 2010, required supplemental oxygen and deprived her of an otherwise healthy life. Just before Thanksgiving 2011, when it became fully apparent that the disease left her with no other option for survival, she relocated from her Portland home to a Seattle apartment to await a life-saving lung transplant. Unfortunately, Colleen’s condition rapidly deteriorated, and she was hospitalized just before Christmas. Basic tasks such as bathing and getting out of bed were no longer possible without professional medical assistance. In an appointment with the University of Washington Medical Center’s (UWMC’s) Lung Transplant Team on March 1, 2012, it became clear that Colleen’s eligibility for transplant was nearing an end; she was becoming too de-conditioned to survive the rigors of transplant. With minimal time remaining, Colleen persevered and on the morning of March 6th, she received the call—the Transplant Team found a match.

The transplant occurred in the early hours of March 7th, providing Colleen with two healthy lungs from a donor in Hawaii. After just two-and-a-half days in the intensive care unit on a breathing machine, the tube was removed and—for the first time in over 18 months—Colleen was breathing independently, just like the rest of us! Less than a week later, she transferred from the ICU to a regular hospital bed. Just over two weeks after transplant, Colleen transferred to the UWMC rehabilitation unit, where she received four hours of physical and occupational therapy per day, walking the halls of the hospital, working out in the therapy gym, and practicing everyday tasks necessary for living in her home. On April 12th– for the first time since December — Colleen was discharged back to the Seattle apartment. From this point forward, the Transplant team projects that she will spend upwards of three months in the Seattle apartment, keeping herself in close proximity to the Team, attending weekly appointments at UWMC, and continuing with a rigorous therapy routine on an outpatient basis.