Winchester woman with COPD gets a double lung transplant; Kentucky has second highest rate of COPD in nation

 Dr. Maher Baz, UK HealthCare lung transplant
medical director, and Glenda Brown, recipient.

Glenda Brown smoked for 30 years before she quit in 2000. She then spent the next 20 years gasping for air after being diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which got so bad she eventually needed a double lung transplant, Allison Perry reports in a University of Kentucky news release.

Brown is not alone in this diagnosis. Kentucky has the second highest rate of COPD in the nation, which is largely a result of its high smoking rate, 26 percent. It is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. and affects at least 16 million Americans and millions more who don't know they have it, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health.  

Brown, a 62-year-old woman from Winchester, told Perry that she used to wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe and had to race to an open window just to get a breath of cold air to soothe her cramping chest.

While Brown quit smoking in 2000, she told Perry that her breathing worsened over the years and eventually caused her to quit her job once she required oxygen around the clock. She added that she largely became responsible for herself in 2008 after her husband died.

Brown first learned she needed a lung transplant during a 2009 hospitalization for bronchitis. She said she was referred to UK HealthCare for an evaluation, but didn't go because of fear. "I was trying to fool myself," she said. "I put off going to UK for years because I was so scared."

Brown finally decided to go in for the evaluation, but told Perry she still wasn't ready to do the full transplant work-up at that time.

"She was barely able to live independently," said her lung doctor, Maher Baz. "She was on oxygen around the clock and couldn't do much outside the house."

It wasn't until nearly two years later that she was finally ready for the full work-up, and on March 9, 2016, she was officially added to the transplant list. And just four days later they found a match, though most transplant patients have to wait months or even years for a match.

"I decided to leave it all in God’s hands and had the attitude that if this is to happen, then it will happen," Brown told Perry.

Baz, who is also the medical director of the lung transplant program at UK, said: "I think she decided to throw caution to the wind once she convinced herself that this is not a life she wanted to live. She embraced change, and decided to replace it with an active and independent lifestyle."

Brown said she expected to wake up from her surgery and feel instant relief in her breathing, but instead had to retrain her body how to breath normally because she had been taking short, shallow breaths for so many years.

Almost 18 months after her transplant, Brown told Perry that "her quality of life has dramatically improved and she's been more active than ever – even taking Zumba for the first time."

"I get to live again," Brown said. "I'm doing things I haven't been able to do in years."

Brown told Perry she had no desire to smoke again, especially after the gift she had been given.

"I know exactly what I went through when smoking, and what it did to my lungs," she said. "And I would never disrespect the person who gave me these new lungs… I'm so blessed."

Perry writes that the average lifespan of transplanted lungs averages 5-6 years, though some patients are able to keep their lungs for a decade or more. She added that improving lung transplant outcomes continues to be a point of focus for medical teams across the country.

UK continues to build its lung transplant program and was recently recognized as the program with the best one-year survival rates for lung transplants in the country, Perry reports.

Anyone can sign up to become an organ donor by joining the Kentucky Organ Donor Registry. To join visit www.donatelifeky.org or sign up when you renew your driver’s license.