Bank Helps Raise Funds for Cystic Fibrosis Patient : Medicine: Parents are prepared to donate lobes of their lungs to daughter, but family needs to defray costs of $250,000 surgery.
Saturday was another day in the hospital for 21-year-old Renee Lee, a day like many of the 247 others she has spent in medical facilities over the past two years.
Lee, who is fighting the rapidly worsening effects of cystic fibrosis, has seen her weight drop, her lung capacity decline dramatically and her once-active lifestyle destroyed. In the past two weeks she has developed pancreatitis, a painful side effect of her disease that makes it impossible to eat solid foods. Four different intravenous tubes drip liquid food and painkillers into her body.
Now, doctors say, hope for the former high school cheerleader’s recovery depend on a costly lung transplant operation that will require her receiving lobes of her mother’s and father’s lungs. The expensive surgery will cost the family about $250,000, and the family does not know how much its insurance will cover.
Aided by the San Juan Capistrano branch of Farmers & Merchants Bank, Lee’s parents, Jenny and Mike Lee, have launched a fund-raiser to provide the operation Renee requires.
“We have insurance, but we don’t know how much the insurance will pay, if anything,” said Jenny Lee, 44. “We decided we should get on the stick and start raising money. We believe we need a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $250,000, depending on how much the insurance will cover.”
The Lees are longtime customers of the bank and Renee Lee has her own personal account there.
“They have been incredibly nice,” Jenny Lee said Sunday from her daughter’s bedside at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. “A couple of Renee’s classmates work there, too.”
Melanee Knisely, a bank spokeswoman, said Farmers & Merchants Bank has taken on the Lees’ cause as a community project. Payments can be mailed directly to the bank and employees will help Jenny Lee with thank-you cards, Knisely said.
“We will also be passing around a donation envelope to our employees and will probably send a flyer to the other 16 branches,” Knisely said.
Life for Renee and Jenny Lee has lately been relegated to trips back and forth from her San Juan Capistrano home to the hospital. She last returned home July 6, only to develop the pancreatitis.
“I used to say I was a housewife. Now I call myself a hospital wife,” Jenny Lee said. “I tried working for about a year, but I just can’t do it under these circumstances.” Mike Lee is a captain in the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Cystic fibrosis is an incurable, degenerative disease in which the cells of certain glands of the body secrete large amounts of abnormally thick mucus. Damage most often occurs to the lungs, pancreas and liver. It has been part of Renee Lee’s life since birth, but it has gotten worse since she graduated from Capistrano Valley Christian School in San Juan Capistrano in 1991, her mother said.
After graduation, Lee managed to take two classes at Saddleback College, but had to drop out.
“Her doctors told us in February that she has less than 20% lung capacity and probably had two years or less to live without the transplant,” Jenny Lee said.
The operation will require doctors to remove both of Renee Lee’s diseased lungs and replace them with one part of Mike Lee’s lung and another part of Jenny Lee’s lung. If all goes as planned, Renee’s lungs and her parents’ lungs will heal and regenerate to full size within six months, Jenny Lee said.
The Lees have another daughter, 18-year-old Rebecca, who also suffers from cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease that is passed on by parents who do not know they are carriers, Jenny Lee said.
“Rebecca is doing very well. She has never had the problems Renee has,” Jenny Lee said. Donations can be made to the Renee Lee Trust Fund, c/o Farmers & Merchants Bank, 31873 Del Obispo St., San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675.
