Thanks to the Ohio State University Medical Center, Joseph Talbott can breathe easier again.
Talbott was a transplant patient and the recipient of a new lung at the medical center, and he said receiving his lungs was truly a miracle.
Before receiving his new lungs on Sept. 8, 2000, Talbott had been facing many hardships.
“I’ve passed out from coughing too hard,” Talbott said. “You lose all your motivation, because everything is so difficult. Getting up in the morning, putting on shoes takes hours. You can’t do anything.”
His illness, emphysema, stemmed from spending years around harsh chemicals as a pipe-fitter and contractor. Emphysema is the leading disease affecting the lung, rendering it ineffective.
“I also smoked for a number of years,” Talbott said.
The circumstances that lead to receiving an organ are emotional., he said.
“It’s a sweet sorrow,” he said. “A family had to lose a loved one in order for me to survive. When I was in the operating room I felt a presence with me. I like to believe it was my donor looking in on me.”
Talbott said he was lucky to receive his lung. There are still 2,500 people who are waiting for new lungs and thousands more who need a heart.
“Around 800 of those will be lucky enough to receive their new lung,” said Moira Kelsey, a resident nurse and the lung-transplant coordinator.
“The rest will have to wait,” she said. “We lose many patients whose time simply runs out.”
Nearly 50 percent die, Kelsey said.
According to Kelsey, the lung is the most difficult organ to transplant. Exposure to foreign bacteria and infection is a serious concern, because every time a patient breathes in the lungs are exposed to the outside world, she said.
“Around 70 percent survive for only a year following the operation,” Kelsey said. “Close to 50 percent of the patients make it five years.”
Getting a transplant is not an easy process.
“Transplantation is the last option,” said Sherri Wissman, a resident nurse and a heart-transplant coordinator at OSU.
“We explore all other possible avenues to determine whether this is the right course of action,” she said.
By putting a new organ into a person, doctors introduce foreign substances into the body. The person’s immune system will attack that new organ if the right drugs are not administered.
Medication can also have bad effects on the patient.
“The medication has side effects which weaken the immune system as well as put stress on the other organs of the body,” Kelsey said. “That is why transplantation is always a last option. Everything else must be working fine in order to move forward with the operation.”
Transplants are costly. Each surgery can easily exceed $100,000, excluding the costs of medicine patients must take for the rest of their lives.
“$2,000 to $3,000 a month is not an unheard of number to spend on post-operation medication,” Wissman said.
Transplants can be performed at two OSU facilities — the solid organ Transplant Center and the Cardiothoracic Surgery Center. The Solid Organ Transplant Center, which deals with kidney, liver and pancreas transplants, is located on 770 Kinnear Road, and the Cardiothoracic Surgery Center is on the eighth floor of University Hospital.
The facilities have recorded 54 successful lung transplants and 254 heart-transplants. The kidney-pancreas transplant program is one of the top six in the country based on volume.
The only limitation to the number of surgeries the staff can perform is the number of donors. By registering as a donor when renewing a driver’s license, a person who is a victim of an accident can pass the gift of life on to someone who really needs it.
