Touched by Transplant: Paula's Miracle

April is National Donate Life Month. To raise awareness about the importance of organ donation and to celebrate transplant donors, we are sharing stories of HOPE from patients and families touched by transplant. 

This reflection was written by HelpHOPELive client Paula Thrush. 

My name is Paula, and I AM A MIRACLE! My odyssey began in 2005. Although I’d been diagnosed with COPD a few years before, I continued to commute 40 miles one way to work and take care of my husband, two dogs and four cats. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in ’05, I left my very busy job and told my boss to have a great long weekend and that I’d see him on Monday. Those wishes didn’t come true.

I had shopped for our Thanksgiving dinner supplies earlier and intended to stuff the turkey, make homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, and fix some fresh green beans. The preparation usually took me about an hour, but this time it took almost that long just to stuff the bird. I knew something wasn’t right-- I had never been so completely short of breath and out of energy.

By Saturday, I couldn’t breathe out enough. My husband was at work and my only close neighbor was gone, so I drove myself the five or so miles to the satellite hospital. I don’t remember the drive or leaving my car on the curb with the engine running, door open and my purse on the seat. My oxygen saturation rate was in the low 60s; the doctor said he didn’t know how I even made it there. Once stabilized, they sent me by ambulance to the main hospital downtown where I was diagnosed with full-blown pneumonia and an exacerbation of COPD. They sent me home three days later, but it was way too soon.

Within days, my husband was carrying me into that same satellite hospital in the wee hours of the morning. My lips were blue, and I was unresponsive when they started working on me. My O2 level when I arrived was just 50, and this time when they transported me to the main hospital, my stay would be much longer.

Due to my pain and inability to breathe well, they kept me in a light semi-coma for what they thought would be a few days. Instead, when they tried to bring me back, I dove into a 6-week coma that baffled my doctors, terrified my family and friends, and left me so weak and uncoordinated that I required three full weeks of physical therapy before I could go home again. I was taken out of work, put on permanent disability and tethered to an oxygen concentrator 24/7. At 44 years old, I lost my career, my marriage and almost all of my hope. My doctor told me that he could probably keep me alive for a long time but my quality of life would rapidly decline. He said the only way to turn it around was to have a bi-lateral lung transplant.

I was accepted for Duke’s transplant program in February 2010, and that May my dad, my best friend and I moved to Durham. I was called for a potential set of lungs on July 4, but when the surgeons received the lungs, they found them to be unacceptable. My second call came on July 14, and that’s when the real miracle began!

At 4:30 am, on July 15, 2010, my new lungs were in and working. I became a Duke “transplant poster child” in many ways: I was out of ICU in just over 36 hours instead of the usual 72; I was walking two miles within a week and a half; and I was released from the hospital just 12 days after surgery. I was back at Duke’s Center for Living three days after my release, and I did six more weeks of pulmonary rehab to regain the strength that I lost due to surgery. Then I had my first bronchoscopy in August 2010, and the equipment malfunctioned and the doctor accidently sliced my right lung with the device. I woke up in the ICU, and I was released back to therapy a couple of days later. The same doctor told me a few weeks later that if my right lung didn’t fully inflate and push the fluid out of my plural cavity, she would have to have me admitted to place drain tubes in my lung. I told her that wouldn’t be necessary since I had been meditating with my right lung-calming it and encouraging it to fill with air and press out the fluid. She looked up from my chart, smiled and said, “Good luck with that.” The following week, my lung was fully inflated and there was no sign of fluid around it. Talk about astonished!

On September 9, my dad and I pulled into our driveway met by balloons, banners and friends ready to celebrate my return. Some of those same friends have supported me since pre-transplant in raising funds and awareness of the importance of organ donation.

My life during these last four years has been fuller, happier and healthier than my previous 20, and every day is full of blessings. I LIVE life now, instead of just existing day to day, and I plan to LIVE until I die. I’ve discovered that when I “go through” something, I’m in a victim state. So I choose instead to “experience” things, events, struggles and life itself. Since my transplant, I’ve fallen in love and had my heart broken, been fortunate to live on my own for two years, and extra fortunate to have my dad – my forever caregiver – offer shelter and financial help for my 14-year-old cats and me. I have re-bonded with my younger sister and healed our wounded relationship, met an older half-sister, got my college degree, walked many, many miles on the beautiful beaches near my home, and have been blessed by the love, prayers, support and kindness of a strong circle of friends and family.

I’m deeply and eternally grateful for the chance to really LIVE again and thankful for the gift of life. Each of us has our own journey to make, our own life to live, our own karma to face, and our own outcome to reach. Miracles do happen. I’ve been told that my life is a testament to others about strength, faith, courage, tenacity, resilience and the refusal to accept everything I’m told at face value. And I know that my path is divine. It may not be easy, but I’m here to take my own journey, to live until I die. I’m the only one who can do it, and by grace I wake up every day ready to try it again!