Breathing Easier : Woman Who Got Lung Transplants From Her Parents Leaves Hospital

Stacy Sewell, the young woman who made medical history five weeks ago when her parents each gave her a portion of their lungs, went home from the hospital Friday, all smiles and aglow in the wonder of what most of us take for granted: the simple ability to breathe.

The cystic fibrosis patient appeared healthy and relaxed at a noon news conference, flanked by her parents and the surgeon who performed the unique transplant. The controversial operation was the first time that two living donors had been used in a lung transplant and the first lung transplant on a cystic fibrosis patient.

“It’s so nice just to be able to breathe like a normal person,” the small, bespectacled 21-year-old said in an interview shortly after she met the press. “I stand up straight all by myself now and I don’t have blue fingers or blue lips. . . . I love air! It’s so nice. Breathing is the most wonderful feeling that I could ever imagine.”

Sewell spoke of serious moments: She was frightened before the surgery--not for herself but for her parents, Barbara and Jim Sewell. “All the time, that’s all I did, was worry about my parents. . . . I could not love them any more than I do. I’ll take every breath for them because it’s their lungs.”

In retrospect, she said, she is just now realizing how close she came to dying. “Maybe it was denial . . . I had no idea I was that close.”

But there were lighter moments too.

Upon waking up after the operation, her first sight was of a respiratory therapist holding a piece of equipment she mistook for a rodent. Her first words were: “Get that rat away from me!”

And now that she is going home, what would she most like to do? “Go shopping!” she blurted out. “I’m dying to go to the mall.”

The mall, however, may have to wait for several months while doctors ease Sewell off medicine designed to prevent her body from rejecting her new lungs.

Until her immune system grows stronger, she will be subject to infections and must wear a surgical mask outdoors, stay away from crowded places and return to the hospital for checkups twice a week. She will continue physical therapy to regain her strength, and each day she will relay computer images of her lung capacity to the hospital by breathing into special equipment attached to the telephone at her family’s Antelope Valley home.

Dr. Vaughn Starnes, who performed the landmark transplant at USC University Hospital on Jan. 29, said he is optimistic that Sewell eventually will be able to “go about her life without ever knowing she had a transplant.” Although lung transplant patients generally have a 70% chance of surviving three years after the transplant, Starnes said Sewell has had an especially speedy recovery and her prognosis is excellent.

Most lung transplant patients experience at least one serious episode in which their body attempts to reject the new organs, Starnes said. But Sewell has had just one minor rejection episode, which occurred last week. It was so mild she did not even notice it; doctors detected it first, Starnes said.

Dressed casually in a striped shirt and purple jeans, her long brown hair pulled back from her face to reveal a pair of dangling gold earrings, Sewell seem startled Friday by the phalanx of cameras before her. She never expected to be the focus of such attention, she said.

In a slightly nasal voice (she also is recovering from surgery to repair a deviated septum) she said she does not understand the controversy about the lung transplant, or why some medical ethics experts have questioned the wisdom of putting her parents at risk for an experimental operation.

For the transplant, Barbara and Jim Sewell each donated one of their five lung lobes to give their daughter a new set. Because she is so small, the two lobes give her all the breathing capacity she needs. On Friday, the couple said their breathing capacity has not been diminished, although Barbara Sewell said her recovery has been slower than her husband’s and she is still tired.

The transplant did not cure their daughter’s cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease that causes sticky mucus to form throughout the body, clogging the lungs and the digestive tract. She must continue taking special enzymes to enable her to digest food. But because the disease will not recur in the new lungs, it is no longer fatal. And for Sewell, that opens up a whole world of possibilities.

Before the transplant she was bedridden and could barely breathe. Today she can ride a stationary bicycle for 20 minutes. She hopes to return to college and resume her part-time job at a department store.

As for other plans, she is not quite certain: “When I was sick, I didn’t get to do that much. I have no idea what I am capable of doing.”